Dear young people,

No-one is more in touch with the “new things” on which humanity is staking its future than you. This is why your world meeting is so valuable and takes place in gremio Ecclesiae: not only in the heart, but in the womb of a Church that, with God’s grace, generates faith and love. The Economy of Francesco is the joyful expression of a journey that enriches economic thought and initiative with the seed of the Gospel, which Saint Francis of Assisi accepted sine glossa and to whose transformative power our beloved Pope Francis bore witness with all his strength. Yes, dear friends, the Gospel transfigures human work and produces changes in us that bring abundant life into the world. You know all this well, because in Assisi you did not just dream, but you met people and started projects inspired by the Gospel and capable of making even the desert bloom.

This year, naturally, our grateful thoughts go to Pope Francis: his death was on the day and with the fragrance of Easter. This helps us to preserve his legacy creatively, and particularly commits you, who had a deep understanding with him, to organize the hope that this journey has kindled. In the month of September last year, my Predecessor said to some of you: “In your midst, may a new way of being together and doing business be born that does not produce waste but material and spiritual well-being”. And he immediately added a wish that I would like to make my own: “Have courage, dear friends, have courage! If you are faithful to your vocation, your life will blossom, you will have wonderful stories to tell your children and grandchildren”. [1]

Dear friends, the network of friendship and work that you represent is a “no” to resignation. You can urge many other young people to break out of indifference or the confines of personal or group objectives, in order to welcome the Kingdom of God and his justice through new ways of loving the common good. It is a matter of rekindling dreams, of valuing prayer, study and work, of thinking together, as true energies of renewal.

The title of your meeting is “Restarting the Economy”: an economy that restarts is not just a machine that produces, but an activity that restores life to people, to communities, to our common home. To restart means to free from the chains of injustice, to restore what was harmed and to create spaces where every man and woman can breathe dignity and hope. To restart can imply changing direction and exploring new paths.

In the recent meeting with popular Movements, I wished to dwell on the theme of the “new”, because Pope Leo XIII wrote, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Encyclical  Rerum Novarum, and this title challenges us to this day. “There are certainly ‘new things’ in the world but, when we say this, we generally adopt a ‘view from the centre’ and refer to things like artificial intelligence or robotics. However today I would like to look at the ‘new things’ with you, taking a view from the periphery”. [2] You are well acquainted with this perspective, because only an economy that divests itself of privilege and embraces reality, starting with the leper, that is, those who are discarded, expelled and removed, can be considered to be “of Francesco”. “This is the viewpoint that I want to convey: the new things seen from the periphery, and the fact that in your efforts you do not limit yourselves to protesting, but also look for solutions”. [3] In this regard, the French Benedictine Ghislain Lafont identified a “principle of smallness” which, he wrote, “It can be expressed thus: the driving force of history is not power, but poverty; or rather: real change comes about through the action of weak elements”. [4]

Dear young people, I encourage you to show through your lives, your endeavours, your studies, the shortcomings of a system that increases inequality and fails to care for the small and the weak. Together, we can welcome God’s dreams and see that they expand our dreams, drawing us into an adventure as a people in which walls and prejudices fall and peace prevails.

I urge you, so that your tireless work is not just social action and linked to passing fads, to nourish your spirit and return to your heart: the Gospels and other books of the Bible are the landscape in which God still makes his voice heard and inspires our visions, putting us in dialogue with his friends, the protagonists of the history of salvation. You will be good businesspeople and good economists if you know the divine economy in this way: it is the secret of so many witnesses who have gone before us and who still walk with us.

Dear young people, go forward. Indeed, let us go forward together! May my blessing reach you and accompany you.

From the Vatican, 26 November 2025
 

LEO PP. XIV

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[1] Francis,  Address to the Delegation of The Economy of Francesco, 25 September 2024.

[2] Address to participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, 23 October 2025.

[3] Ibidem.

[4] Ghislain Lafont,  Piccolo saggio sul tempo di papa Francesco, EDB, Bologna 2017, p. 51.

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 28 November 2025