By Jay Sorgi • Posted November 19, 2025

Some 240 Philadelphia-area pilgrims are heading west to Indianapolis this week to gather with 15,000 other young Catholics in person for the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) Nov. 20-22.

On Friday, Nov. 22 at 10:15 a.m., they will share a digital encounter with Pope Leo XIV through a special live conversation.

At the same time in the Philadelphia region, more than 10,000 students at all 15 archdiocesan high schools will  join the encounter dubbed “Pope Leo Live: A Call to Unity and Peace!”

The pope is expected to address the young people at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis live from Rome. He will offer a personal message of hope then answer questions in real time from several young people.

The papal live video event, which Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez helped facilitate and will co-host in Indianapolis, is the first of its kind for the annual National Catholic Youth Conference.

Archbishop Pérez has said that through the live digital encounter, the pontiff “will do something for the young people of our country that has never been done on such a grand scale by any previous pope.”

Marisally Santiago, the director of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office of Ministry with Youth, calls the encounter an extra big slice of cake atop what already promises to be a soul-feeding Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Indianapolis.

“The NCYC alone, then having this experience within it, I think it’s going to be just beyond a blast,” said Santiago.

The experience of 15,000 youths “listening to the pope, engaging with the pope, having peers engage in the questions that they’re also having with Pope Leo — none of this is scripted. He insisted that this is literally a raw conversation with young people that he’s going to be having.”

Santiago says that initially, Archbishop Pérez suggested a 15-minute conversation for the event, but Pope Leo said that wasn’t long enough. He wanted 45 minutes.

“It really shows the Holy Father wants to engage with young people,” Santiago said. “It really shows that he has a heart for young people. He wants to be there for them. He wants them to know that they have an advocate.”

Once the encounter was set, Archbishop Pérez’s next step was to get Philadelphia’s Catholic schools on board to watch virtually.

“(The archbishop) came to us and said, ‘How cool would it be if the schools could get together in a pep rally-type format in the auditorium, or schools that have large spaces for gathering could all watch this together and have their own little coming together in their own spaces?,’” according to Steve Clement, the chief administrative officer for secondary schools of the archdiocese. “He asked us if it was possible, and (we said), ‘Yeah, for sure. “It might surprise you,” Clement joked, “but young people are always OK with some time out of class, pausing the curriculum side of things.”

Clement said the chance to view Friday’s live conversation echoes the afternoon last May 8  when in similar fashion students of Archbishop Ryan High School in Northeast Philadelphia gathered around video screens to watch then-Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 1977 graduate of Villanova University, be elected pope by the College of Cardinals.

“They were all together watching him. Our team happened to be at Archbishop Ryan that day for an official school visit to see (the election) through the eyes of students. That was amazing,” Clement said.

While the seniors present last spring have graduated, the other three classes will hear “the first American Pope speak to young people in the same setting that three-quarters of them were in when he was elected,” Clement said, which he called “tremendous.”

Fifteen archdiocesan high schools in five counties will host “Pope Rallies” Friday morning: Archbishop Ryan, Archbishop Wood, Bishop Shanahan, Cardinal O’Hara, Little Flower and Pope John Paul II.

EWTN will broadcast the live event and stream it on all its platforms.

Clement and Santiago believe the encounter with young people makes Pope Leo XIV so much more approachable as the leader of the Catholic Church.

“It really humanizes the role,” said Clement. “It’s an unbelievable feeling to think that here’s this guy who ate at Wawa, went to Villanova, or maybe said ‘Go Birds,’ was at Bonner (Msgr. Bonner & Archbishop Prendergast Catholic High School), and could have been stuck in traffic on the Schuylkill (Expressway).”

While thousands of their peers watch on screens at in-school rallies, the teenagers and their chaperones representing all five Philadelphia-area counties will stand with 15,000 fellow faithful Catholics in listening to the Holy Father’s words — double the size of the group that went to Indianapolis in 2023.

The NCYC offers a three-day experience of sacraments, music, witness, eucharistic adoration and service opportunities that Santiago says will inspire the young attendees.

“The biggest piece is young people seeing other young people on fire for their faith, wanting to engage with their faith, and do it in a place that does it dynamically, that does it reverently, and that shows what a young Church can look like when it is empowered,” said Santiago.

She adds that while these encounters are Christ-filled life-changers for young people, the real mission becomes taking what they’ve experienced into the everyday.

“Discipleship doesn’t take place in an event. Discipleship takes place in the journey, especially when you receive what these kids bring back,” said Santiago.

“I simply pray that they encounter Christ in such a way that when they come back, they just cannot contain Him.”