From 24 to 27 July, hundreds of young people from the Comboni youth movements across Europe will gather in Milan, Verona, and Florence, Italy, in preparation for the Youth Jubilee in Rome. Together, they will contemplate the significance of hope in a world that is increasingly adrift.

Today, our world is marked by such global challenges as the climate crisis, economic inequalities, the exploitation of populations, forced migrations and the tendency towards a spirituality that forgets God the Creator and Father of all. All situations that wreck the hopes of many people and show us how life is put to the test.

However, it must be said that perhaps we don’t talk much about hope, perhaps it is little known, but everyone hopes, because to live is to hope and to hope is to live. If there is one thing that distinguishes man from other creatures, it is hope. It keeps us alive, and it can be said that where hope is extinguished, life is extinguished too.

The Jubilee offers us the opportunity to reflect on crucial issues such as social justice, integral ecology and the dignity of every person, which are the fundamental values of our faith, and to deepen a healthy spirituality that can nourish a passion for the care of our interiority and of all the reality that surrounds us.

All these concerns are at the heart of the Comboni mission, which, with its attention to the existential peripheries and the promotion of the dignity of each individual, pushes us to build a more just and sustainable future.

The Comboni Family in Europe, therefore, believes that this ecclesial event, the Jubilee of Youth, could be an opportunity to revive hope, especially among young people who increasingly declare that they do not have faith in the future. Desirous of offering our contribution to the journey of the Church that celebrates this event, we have therefore decided to organise a pilgrimage for the young people we meet in our missions in Europe.

The Jubilee will be for the young people who participate with us an opportunity to experience the mercy of God and the experience of the Church as a people on a journey that will be able to bring light into their lives and their everyday choices, thanks to the different stages they will go through. Therefore, they will be invited to live it as a moment of grace not only for themselves, but also for their communities of origin.

By participating in the “Comboni moment” (24-27 July 2025), which according to our approach would like to be a preparation for the Jubilee of Youth in Rome, young people will have the opportunity to delve deeper into one of the global challenges that we have just listed, which concerns them and which they chose when they registered. They will therefore be welcomed into different groups in different Comboni communities (Milan, Verona and Florence) with different pastoral challenges in Italy.

The Milan group will reflect on the challenge of the commitment of young people. It is about addressing the protagonism of young people in the uncertainty of the current situation, in which their dreams often “collapse”, the future seems uncertain and impermeable to their dreams, studies do not offer opportunities and the lack of a job or sufficiently stable occupation risks nullifying their ambitions. The meeting and listening that they will have with their peers engaged at a civil and ecclesial level can be, in our opinion, a stimulus and a reason for hope for them.

The Verona group will deepen the theme of critical information. It is about reflecting on the call to “Communicate (in) hope” in a context of crisis like the one our world is going through. Young people must commit to a communication that uses responsibility and discernment, a communication free from prejudice, rancour, fanaticism, ideology or violence. We believe that it is above all the task of young people today to commit to communication that can listen to the cry of people who have no voice and to welcome the weak.

The young people who will be welcomed into our community in Florence will be accompanied on a path of reflection on the issues of care for creation, one of the most urgent challenges of our time, which tends more and more to valorise social models in which the agenda is dictated by the pursuit of profit rather than care for relationships with others, creation and God.

Everything will take place in a climate of brotherhood and friendship, in an international and multicultural context. We will draw inspiration from the Word of God, human experience and the figure of our Founder, Saint Daniel Comboni, and his charism. In the first stage, participants will have the opportunity to listen to the testimonies of young people of their age, to participate in thematic workshops, to dedicate themselves to moments of prayer and to devote themselves to service activities that can inspire in them a lifestyle capable of transforming their daily lives.

On July 28, the young people of these communities will move to Rome, where they will participate in the meetings scheduled for that week together with other young people from all over the world.

The journey can be an opportunity to remind ourselves that there are “pilgrimages” that no one would ever want to undertake: those that force young people, children and entire families to leave their land and their home. The same journey together to Rome can help us better understand the first Christian community, which, starting from the establishment of the group of apostles, found itself thinking of itself as “we”, in which the call of each was experienced within a common and reciprocal belonging. The Comboni Family in Europe hopes that this experience can become a point of (re)departure for all the young people of the world, in particular for those who have chosen to live these moments with us.

Fr. Raoul Sohouénou
Coordinator of Comboni Youth Jubilee