The initiative “Lunch with the Pope” is repeated, as it was on 17 August last year. In the setting of Borgo Laudato si’ Pope Leo, on 11 July, meets around 200 people in conditions of social vulnerability from the Diocese of Rome. In the Pontifical Gardens of Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope spends a period of rest, a Eucharistic celebration and the “Liturgy for the Custody of Creation” will first be held. This will be followed by a welcome moment, a guided tour of the village and the culminating moment: lunch shared with the Pontiff.
The initiative, promoted by the Laudato si’ Higher Education Centre, was born from a first meeting in August 2025 with the poor of the diocese of Albano and has now become an annual event. Cardinal Fabio Baggio underlined that “the custody of creation and the care of the person are a single mission”, while the Pope’s Almoner, Archbishop Luis Marín de San Martín recalled that charity is expressed in “closeness, meeting and sharing”.
The event reiterates the Church’s vocation to be close to those on the margins. “When the Church puts the most vulnerable people at the centre”, declares Monsignor Martin, it makes the Gospel visible and testifies that no one is on the margins in the heart of God, no one is on the margins in the heart of God”.
The annual event promoted by the Laudato si’ Higher Education Center, which takes care of the development of the Borgo Laudato si’ project, sees each year the invitation to a different diocese which, the organizers explain, «must involve people living in situations of poverty, refugees, migrants and other conditions of social fragility, offering them a day immersed in the beauty of creation and the opportunity to meet the Holy Father. This year’s edition takes on a particular ecclesial value because it arises from the collaboration between the Laudato si’ Higher Education Center, the Dicastery for the Service of Charity and the Diocese of Rome. The aforementioned institutions jointly promote a single pastoral initiative, involving the main ecclesial and associative realities involved daily in accompanying people in vulnerable conditions in the Capital”.
«We wanted the protagonists of this day to be people accompanied daily by the parishes, by Caritas and by the numerous ecclesial and associative realities of the Diocese of Rome», concludes Cardinal Baldassarre Reina, vicar general of His Holiness for the diocese of Rome. «The meeting with the Holy Father restores centrality to those who too often remain on the margins and calls the entire Christian community to the responsibility of welcoming».
