Pope Leo Blesses Dakar Youth Olympians as Hope
On All Saints, he also hailed the Georgia Martyrs’ beatification and a Franciscan mission among Rome’s poor, urging prayer for the dead.
At the Angelus on Sunday, November 1, the Solemnity of All Saints, Pope Leo XIV greeted and blessed more than 2,600 athletes competing in the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal.
The Games run from October 31 to November 13. The athletes, aged 15 to 18, represent 204 National Olympic Committees, including the Refugee Olympic Team. The Pope called the gathering “the first Olympic event organized on the African continent.”
“Here, once again, we see a sign of hope emerging from the world of sport! I warmly greet and bless all the participants,” he said.
Sport as a School of Cooperation
He echoed remarks he had made the day before, October 31, when he received basketball players from the U.S. teams of Notre Dame and Villanova: sport is a vehicle of cooperation and shared values. Beyond the competitions themselves, the Youth Olympic Games include educational and cultural encounters intended to foster Olympic values and mutual understanding among young people from around the world.
Georgia Martyrs and Mission Among the Poor
In the same greetings, the Pope recalled the beatification celebrated on Saturday, October 31, in Savannah, Georgia, of the Franciscan friars Pedro de Corpa and four companions, known as the Georgia Martyrs. Killed out of hatred for the faith in 1597 during their mission among the Guale Indigenous people, they were beatified in a ceremony presided over by Cardinal Frank Leo, archbishop of Toronto and papal legate, before hundreds of the faithful.
“They generously responded to the Lord’s call to evangelize the peoples of the Americas, even to the point of giving their lives,” the Pope said, invoking their intercession for all missionaries of the Gospel.
He also greeted the Franciscan “Mission with the Poor” in Rome, scheduled from November 8 to 15 for the eighth centenary of St. Francis of Assisi’s death, in collaboration with diocesan Caritas. About 150 friars will divide into teams to meet situations of poverty across the city—in prisons, on the peripheries, and amid housing emergencies. The Pope congratulated the participants and thanked civil institutions and law enforcement “that have given their full cooperation.”
Finally, looking ahead to All Souls’ Day, he asked the faithful to pray for the dead as he prepared to celebrate Mass on November 2 at Rome’s Verano Cemetery.