Pope Leo XIV has called on the young people of Angola to help shape a society marked by justice, peace and human dignity, telling pilgrims gathered at one of the country’s best-known Marian shrines that the Gospel demands more than private devotion. Speaking during a rosary gathering at Mama Muxima on Sunday, the Pope said the faithful must work for a world in which war, poverty, injustice and dishonesty no longer prevail.

The encounter took place at the sanctuary known as “Mother of the Heart”, a place of longstanding importance in Angolan Catholic life. Leo told those assembled that he was glad to join them in Marian prayer and reflected on the rosary as a devotion both simple and profound, one that has long sustained Christian faith and mission. Drawing on the thought of St John Paul II, he presented it as a prayer that keeps the Church close to the freshness of its beginnings and ready to proclaim Christ to the world.

The Pope said Angola’s Church showed precisely that vitality. He described it as youthful and alive, a community in which the freshness of faith and the strength of the Spirit could still be felt. He also placed the shrine itself within the broader history of the nation, noting that for centuries it has been a place where believers have come in moments of joy, suffering and national trial.

Reflecting on Easter, Leo said the Resurrection reveals both the Christian destiny and the Christian task. Christ, he said, has opened the way to the Father, while also giving the faithful his Spirit so that they may walk that demanding path and share its beauty with others. Looking to Mary as mother and model, he urged Catholics to carry the light of the risen Lord to those they meet.

That Marian note ran through the whole address. The Pope dwelt on the popular local title of the shrine, explaining that “Mother of the Heart” points to the heart of Mary as pure, wise and attentive to the mysteries of her Son. To pray the rosary, he said, is therefore not merely to repeat words but to accept a responsibility: to love others generously, to serve the common good, and to show particular concern for the poor.

Leo gave that appeal a strongly practical form. Christian charity, he said, must include concern that the hungry are fed, the sick cared for, children properly educated and the elderly allowed to live in peace. Mary’s maternal concern, he suggested, teaches believers to think in precisely those terms and to translate prayer into action.

Turning especially to the young people present, the Pope said the construction of a new sanctuary at Mama Muxima should be read as a sign of a larger mission entrusted to them. Just as a physical shrine is being raised to welcome pilgrims, so too they are being called to help build a better social order — one shaped by the Gospel and ordered to the good of all.

He framed that task in direct language, saying that Our Lady asks them to become workers for justice and bearers of peace. The world they are to help build, he said, must be rid of war, injustice, poverty and corruption, with hearts and institutions more deeply formed by Christian principles. Love, he insisted, and not war, must have the final word.

The visit also carried a wider national resonance. Bishop Emilio Sumbelelo of Viana noted that devotion to Mama Muxima remains deeply woven into Angola’s religious life and recalled that the cornerstone of a future basilica was laid in 2022, fulfilling a promise linked to St John Paul II’s 1992 visit to the country.