How Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church are engaging the digital generation

Vast crowds steamed through Rome last September, to witness the historic canonization of the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint, 15-year-old Carlo Acutis.

Thousands of young people flocked to Vatican City to pay tribute to the British-Italian computer enthusiast, who used the internet to spread the word of Catholicism.

One year on, the canonization can be seen as a symbolic event, both of a church transitioning into a digital era and one that seeks to provide new role models for the young.

At the helm of this transition is Pope Leo XIV, who has received rock star welcomes from large crowds of young people worldwide since his election in May 2025.

“At 70, Pope Leo is obviously not himself a young man,” Ruth Gledhill, assistant editor of Catholic international paper The Table, told The Independent.

“Yet he has an air of youthful vigour around him, he is sporty and fit. He also seems genuinely bereft of any ego.”

Earlier this month, tickets to see the US-born Pope in the 80,000-seat Stade de France near Paris in September sold out in less than an hour.

Among them was 21-year-old Allan, who had 10 members of his family on hand trying to secure a ticket online. It was much the same kind of approach many music fans take when trying to get into hugely popular festivals like Glastonbury.

“[It was] like it was Beyonce,” he told Le Parisien of the challenge in securing a spot at the forthcoming event.

And last August, Pope Leo brought a youth jubilee to a close by holding a mass for more than one million people. Dubbed the “Catholic Woodstock” by Italian media, the Vatican said it drew young attendees from 146 different countries.

Pope Leo is regarded both as a product and a driver of the growing interest in Catholicism among young people, a candidate who was perfectly suited to the role of being a youth-facing pontiff as the amount of interest grew.

“For the first time we have a pope who personally used social media before being elected to the Chair of Peter,” says Alessandro Gisotti, deputy director of Vatican Media. “This is a major development in the Church’s communication.”

The Pope’s understanding of the importance of digital communications is “particularly appealing to younger generations, who see in Leo XIV a pope who is in tune with their way of communicating", he adds.

Leo is also seen by many as having a common, down-to-earth approach that might appeal to the young.

In May, he went viral for using the “6-7” gesture while riding the popemobile in Madrid, and he appears to share many of the same interests of ordinary Catholics around the world, from apps to sports.

Christopher Lamb, CNN’s Vatican correspondent, writes in American Hope: “He’s a pope who understands the online world: he plays Wordle with his brother (and uses a different starter word each day), communicates with WhatsApp, and was even spotted using the Duolingo language app in the early hours of the morning.

“His love of sports, particularly baseball, helps him connect with people, whether he’s holding a tennis racquet with Jannik Sinner or sporting the cap of his beloved Chicago White Sox.

“When passing in his popemobile he was even heard shouting, ‘They lost!’ in response to someone who’d yelled, ‘Go Cubs!’, the White Sox rivals.”