God chose Bethlehem, and that choice alone is enough to prevent us from equating smallness with insignificance.
Pope Leo XIV used the second day of his visit to Uruguay to make a direct appeal to the country's young people, urging them to marry and start families and telling them not to fear lifelong commitment. "Young people, dare to take the step of marrying and starting a family yourselves. Don't be afraid of 'forever'!" he said during a youth prayer service at a packed stadium in Montevideo, according to AFP. The appeal lands in a country that, the report notes, has experienced a sharp decline in birth rates.
The setting matters as much as the message. Uruguay is widely regarded as Latin America's most secular country, and Leo addressed that reputation directly at an evening prayer vigil in Montevideo's Centenario Stadium, the venue that hosted Pope John Paul II in 1988. The Vatican estimated around 70,000 people were inside the stadium, with another 30,000 watching on screens outside, AP reported. Leo said the relatively small number of Catholics in Uruguay did not determine the significance of the Church's presence. "God chose Bethlehem, and that choice alone is enough to prevent us from equating smallness with insignificance," he said.
Earlier in the visit, the Pope travelled to Paysandú in western Uruguay, near the Argentine border, to celebrate his first Mass in South America. The Vatican estimated around 40,000 people attended despite rainy and windy weather. Speaking in Spanish, he said the Catholic faith had been "part of the life of the Uruguayan people since their earliest days, and it must be passed on to future generations with creative courage!" He also invoked mate, the bitter herbal tea widely consumed in Uruguay and its neighbours, as a symbol of unity and shared identity, describing it as "a sign of welcome, integration and shared values."
On Saturday evening he visited Casavalle, a Montevideo neighbourhood affected by drug trafficking and gang violence. He toured homes built by the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Borro and highlighted church groups supporting people recovering from addiction, with donations that include contributions from the US-based Papal Foundation. "We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that there are children in Uruguay who do not go to school for fear of never returning home," he said, urging Christians to follow the example of the Good Samaritan.
The visit is the first stop of a three-nation South American tour; Leo is scheduled to leave Uruguay on Sunday afternoon for Argentina, with the tour set to conclude in Peru, his second homeland. The report does not give figures for the birth-rate decline, nor does it say how the marriage appeal was received by younger Uruguayans or by a government in one of the region's most secular states. What the visit shows is a papacy willing to speak plainly about demography and family in a country where religious affiliation is thin, and to pair that message with the Church's social work in poor and violent neighbourhoods.
