Leo receives warm welcome from Sapienza students, 18 years after Pope Benedict was forced to cancel visit to Rome university due to protests.
Pope Leo XIV paid a pastoral visit on Thursday to Rome university La Sapienza, delivering a wide-ranging address to students and faculty that touched on the search for truth, the spiritual malaise of young people, the dangers of militarism and the responsibilities of academic life.
The programme included prayer at the university chapel, a meeting with students, a plaque unveiling and the main address at 11.30 in the Aula Magna, with the pope departing at around 12.30.
On arrival, he was welcomed by the university’s outgoing rector Antonella Polimeni at the chapel and greeted with a prolonged ovation. He was accompanied by the vicar of Rome, Cardinal Baldo Reina.
After a moment of silent prayer and a meeting with a small group of students, he proceeded to the central piazza where he addressed a larger crowd from the monumental steps before delivering his formal speech inside.
Visiting a Rome university, Pope Leo warned against increased military spending. The money should be spent on education and healthcare, not “elites who care nothing for the common good.”
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Speaking informally to those gathered, the pope said: “Whoever searches, whoever studies, whoever seeks the truth will ultimately seek God, will encounter God, will find God precisely in the beauty of creation.”
He described the visit as above all a pastoral one and spoke of it as a blessing to be at what he called the largest centre of study in all of Europe, adding: “It is God who has called us, God who has given this marvellous creation for all of us.”
In his formal address, he praised the university’s commitment to the right to education for all – including those with fewer financial means, people with disabilities, prisoners, and those fleeing war zones – and welcomed the agreement between the Diocese of Rome and the university to open a humanitarian corridor for students from Gaza.
Student life
He spoke directly to the anxieties of student life, acknowledging that many young people were struggling.
He attributed this in part to what he described as the “pervasive lie of a distorted system” that reduces people to numbers, exasperates competitiveness and condemns individuals to spirals of anxiety. “We are a desire, not an algorithm,” he declared.
Armed conflict
The pope condemned the sharp rise in military spending in Europe and worldwide, saying it should not be called “defence” when it increases tension and insecurity, depletes investment in education and health, and enriches elites indifferent to the common good.
He called for vigilance over the development and military application of artificial intelligence, warning that it risks removing human responsibility from potentially catastrophic decisions. Naming Ukraine, Gaza, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iran, he urged students to be “artisans of true peace – disarmed and disarming, humble and persevering.”
Education
On teaching, he argued that “to teach is a form of charity as much as rescuing a migrant at sea, a poor person on the street, a despairing conscience,” adding that authentic education must speak to the hearts of young people, not merely to their knowledge.
He also invoked his predecessor Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ on climate change, noting that more than a decade on from its publication, the situation did not appear to have improved.
He closed by inviting the entire university community to “collaborate together as builders of peace in the world,” urging those present never to surrender hope: “Have hope always in the possibility of building a new world.”
Papal connections
La Sapienza was founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303, making the visit of a reigning pontiff a continuation of a deep historic bond. Previous popes to have addressed the university include St Paul VI in 1964 and St John Paul II in 1991.
Leo’s visit carried particular resonance in view of what occurred in 2008. Pope Benedict XVI had been invited to inaugurate the academic year at La Sapienza on 17 January of that year.
As the date approached, opposition intensified, and just two days before the scheduled appearance, the pope took the unprecedented step of cancelling his visit after Italy’s interior minister warned of a risk of clashes between extremist groups.
The immediate trigger was a remark Benedict had made 18 years earlier, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the same university. He had quoted the agnostic philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, who had argued that in Galileo’s time “the Church remained far more faithful to reason than Galileo himself” and that the Church’s judgment was “reasonable and just.”
Cardinal Ratzinger’s actual point was that the Galileo affair should not be reduced to a simple narrative of the Church opposing science, and that modern debates about science, reason and responsibility are more complicated than the Enlightenment tradition suggests.
Protests
The protests, however, overlooked this context. Marcello Cini, a physics lecturer who led the opposition, warned it was “dangerous” for the pope to speak, claiming Benedict sought to bring science under religious dogma. In total, 67 professors – out of roughly 4,500 at the university – signed a letter opposing the visit, while around 100 students demonstrated.
Critics also argued that a papal address at a public, secular institution was “incongruous,” invoking the university’s independence – despite its papal foundation. The cancellation shocked the Italian establishment.
In the address he never personally delivered – but which was subsequently published in full – Benedict had stressed that both the papacy and the university share a commitment to truth, albeit through different methods, and warned against reducing reason to mere utility or scientific positivism: “The danger for the Western world is that man, precisely in consideration of the greatness of his wisdom and power, could surrender before the question of truth.”
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