Pope Leo XIV joined a 164-member youth choir and tenor Andrea Bocelli for a Canticle of Peace gathering at Castel Gandolfo, part of celebrations marking the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi. The event was organized by the Laudato si’ Higher Education Center in partnership with the Andrea Bocelli Foundation.
The ABF Voices choir brought together children and young people from Uganda, the Holy Land, and Italy—many of whom, organizers noted, share lives marked by war, poverty and suffering despite their shared love of music.
Reflecting on the choir’s performance, Pope Leo pointed to the power of what they had just experienced: “Music has the remarkable ability to bring different voices together in unison, where each one contributes something unique to the whole. In this sense, choir becomes an ideal symbol of harmony and cooperation.”
Leo addressed the young singers directly, noting that they had just demonstrated something essential about beauty itself: “My dear young friends, as you were singing, did you notice how music drew all of us into an experience of something new, something that was greater than any one of us alone could create? This is the experience of beauty. It opens before us a new horizon, and it awakens within us the desire to go out to meet that horizon. When we set out toward it, we discover not simply something, but Someone. We encounter God our Creator. Just as we can follow a stream back to its source, the beauty of music invites us to encounter the one who is beauty itself.”
The Pope closed with a prayer for peace “in all those places throughout the world that continue to suffer from violence.”
