(ZENIT News / Lisbon, 06.08.2023).- At the end of the closing Mass of Lisbon’s World Youth Day, Pope Francis announced the city where the 2027 World Youth Day will be held.
A prior stage to the 2027 appointment will be the convocation to the Jubilee for Young People in the context of the Ordinary Jubilee that the Church will celebrate throughout 2025 in Rome and the Vatican.
“At the end there is an announcement that all are waiting for: the announcement of the next stage of the path. But before telling which venue will be that of the forty-first WYD, I would like to extend an invitation: I have an appointment with the young people of the whole world for 2025 in Rome, to celebrate together the Jubilee of Young People. I’ll wait for you here in 2025 to celebrate together the Jubilee of Young People.”
According to the calendar of official activities, the Jubilee of Young People will take place from August 1-3 in Rome.
Then the Pope made official the name of the city that will welcome young people in 2027:
“And the next World Youth Day will take place in Asia, it will be in South Korea, in Seoul (. . . ) And so, in 2027, from Europe’s westernmost border, it will go to the Far East. This is a beautiful sign of the universality of the Church, the dream of unity of which you are witnesses.”
South Korea has a total population of 52 million inhabitants, of which almost six million are Catholics. It’s one of the countries where the Church is growing most, also in regard to vocations.
