Pope Leo XIV visited Rome's public La Sapienza University on Thursday, the largest university in Europe and one of Italy's most prestigious academic institutions, where he denounced the "great lie" he said is causing anxiety and depression among young people.
Speaking in the university's Aula Magna after a brief moment of prayer in the "Divina Sapienza" chapel, the pope referred to the "spiritual malaise" affecting many university students and recalled that "we are not the sum of what we have, nor matter randomly assembled in a mute cosmos."
"We are a desire, not an algorithm!" he stressed.
Leo XIV strongly criticized "the pervasive lie of a distorted system that reduces people to numbers, heightens competitiveness, and abandons us to spirals of anxiety."
"For everyone there are difficult seasons," he added. "Yet some may have the impression that they never end. Today this depends increasingly on the blackmail of expectations and the pressure to perform."
The pope was welcomed upon his arrival by the university's rector, Professor Antonella Polimeni, who accompanied him through the campus and during his visit to the exhibition "La Sapienza and the Papacy," which explores the historical and cultural ties between the University of Rome and the Holy See.
That bond has not been without tension. In 2008, the university's then-rector invited Pope Benedict XVI to inaugurate the academic year, but a heated controversy, driven by a small group of professors and students, ultimately derailed the visit. The German pope decided not to attend. The address he had prepared, published days later, argued that "the Christian message should always be an encouragement toward truth and thus a force against the pressure of power and interests." The following Sunday, some 200,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square in a show of support.
The atmosphere Thursday was radically different. Students waited for Leo XIV outside the building, greeting him with enthusiasm and joy while chanting "Long live the pope." Because of the large turnout, many had to remain outside and follow his speech on screens set up for the occasion.
Leo XIV did not mention the 2008 episode. In his address, he described a world "distorted by wars and by words of war," warning against "a contamination of reason that, from the geopolitical level, invades every social relationship."
Correcting the simplification that creates enemies
"It is a contamination of reason that, from the geopolitical level, invades every social relationship. The simplification that creates enemies must be corrected, especially in the university, through care for complexity and the wise exercise of memory," he said.
"The cry of 'never again war!' of my predecessors, so in tune with the rejection of war enshrined in the Italian Constitution, urges us toward a spiritual alliance with the sense of justice that dwells in the hearts of young people, with their vocation not to close themselves off within ideologies or national borders," he added.
In that context, the pope criticized the rise in military spending, particularly in Europe.
"Let us not call defense a rearmament that increases tensions and insecurity, impoverishes investments in education and health care, contradicts trust in diplomacy, and enriches elites that care nothing for the common good," he said.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military spending rose for the 11th consecutive year in 2025, reaching a record $2.887 trillion. Europe accounted for a large share of that increase, with a 14% rise in arms investment, reaching $864 billion.
The Holy Father also warned about the risks of the use of artificial intelligence, both in military and civilian contexts, and urged vigilance so that its development does not "relieve human decisions of responsibility or worsen the tragedy of conflicts."
"What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, in Iran describes the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation," he warned.
Faced with this scenario, the pope issued a direct appeal to young people: "Be a radical 'yes' to life! Yes to innocent life, yes to young life, yes to the life of peoples crying out for peace and justice."
History does not fall hopelessly into the hands of death
Leo XIV also devoted part of his address to ecology, citing Laudato Si', the 2015 encyclical of his predecessor Pope Francis.
"Beyond good intentions and some efforts in that direction, the situation does not seem to have improved," he lamented, encouraging young people to "transform restlessness into prophecy" and not to give in to discouragement.
"Especially those who believe know that history does not fall hopelessly into the hands of death, but is always guarded, no matter what happens, by a God who creates life from nothing, who gives without taking, who shares without consuming," he said.
The pope also criticized the "implosion of a possessive and consumerist paradigm" and encouraged university students to seek a "horizon of meaning" beyond immediacy.
"So little considered by a society with ever fewer children, you show that humanity is capable of a future when it builds that future with wisdom," he told them.
He also emphasized the value of teaching, defining it as a form of charity "as much as helping a migrant at sea, a poor person in the street, or a despairing conscience."
"It means always and in every case loving human life, valuing its possibilities, so that one can speak to the hearts of young people, not only to their knowledge," he added.
For Benedetta Marchiori, a student at La Sapienza, the pope's visit was a moment of encouragement.
"It gave so much joy, so much happiness, so much hope," Marchiori told EWTN News. "It is truly beautiful to hear someone speak who really sees so many different situations every day and brings them back to us — reminding us that we truly have an active role in our own growth, through our study and through being truly centered. It is really beautiful."
Chiara Clementoni, a medical student, said the pope's address was "really encouraging."
"The idea that we are not the sum of what has happened to us, but that through knowledge and study we can also build ourselves as people and open ourselves more to the mysteries that God has placed in nature, that God has placed in everything we can make the object of our study," Clementoni said.
At the end of the meeting, the university gave the pope a reproduction of a stone from the Holy Sepulcher, where a team of La Sapienza archaeologists has been conducting excavations in the basilica in Jerusalem since March 2022.
The project, carried out in collaboration with the various communities that guard the site — the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land, the Latin Patriarchate, and the Greek and Armenian churches — will make it possible for the first time to reconstruct the full stratigraphic history of the building, erected in the fourth century during the time of Emperor Constantine and his mother, St. Helena.
Ishmael Adibuah contributed reporting to this article.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, EWTN News' Spanish-language sister service. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
