Finding Yourself by Losing: What Pope Leo XIV's Visit to San Marino Reveals About Freedom and Joy
On August 22, 2026, Pope Leo XIV stood before pilgrims in the Basilica of San Marino and told young people that 'we only find authentic freedom in Jesus Christ.' The claim cuts against the modern assumption that freedom means the unimpeded execution of one's own will. The Christian tradition has long argued the opposite: that the self oriented toward God discovers a capacity for action that the self folded in on itself cannot reach.
Finding Yourself by Losing: What Pope Leo XIV's Visit to San Marino Reveals About Freedom and Joy
As reported by David Ramos for EWTN News, on August 22, 2026, Pope Leo XIV address the young people of San Marino adopting the words of Pope Benedict: 'Your heart is an open window to infinity!'(Ramos, 2026) Leo added, 'Well, dear young people: keep that window open!'(Ramos, 2026).
Leo told the crowd that 'we only find authentic freedom in Jesus Christ,' and he set that claim against a pattern Benedict had warned against in 2011: 'Do not stay in the partial, immediate answers [...], easier at first and more comfortable, which can give some moments of happiness, of exaltation, of drunkenness, but that do not lead you to the true joy of living.'(Ramos, 2026).
The paradox at the center
The modern concept of freedom is, at its core, a claim about will. To be free is to act without interference on one's own judgment. On that account, submitting one's will to Christ's looks like the precise opposite of liberation. Leo's address proceeds from a different starting point: that the self left to its own immediate preferences does not expand, but contracts. The comfortable answers produce exaltation and then flatness. Instead of a window, one chooses a mirror. After a while, the air of the enclosed room becomes stale and suffocating.
Saint Paul's declaration, cited by Leo XIV in his October 2025 apostolic exhortation *Dilexi Te*, anchors the reality: 'For freedom Christ has set us free' (Gal 5:1). Leo notes there that this freedom 'is not only interior: it manifests itself in history as love that cares for and frees us from every bond of slavery'(Leo, 2025). The capacity to act for others, to leave a mark outside oneself, is what Leo identifies as the outward form of Christian freedom. The self that clings to its own will as the ground of liberty finds its range of action shrinking toward what is private and passing. The self that orients its longings upward through discipleship discovers life, and a life expanded.
John Paul II, in *Redemptoris Missio*, grounded this same movement in the missionary identity of the Church: 'All forms of missionary activity are marked by an awareness that one is furthering human freedom by proclaiming Jesus Christ,' for the Church's mission 'does not restrict freedom but rather promotes it. The Church proposes; she imposes nothing'(1990, para. 39). Fidelity to Christ and the expansion of human freedom are not competing goods in this account. They are a single movement, each requiring the other.
Aiming high enough
There is a pastoral corollary. A formation that aims only at distracting young people from harm, or at producing surface-level religious observance, does not reach what Leo is pointing toward. His exhortation at San Marino was vocational: 'Enthusiastically embrace your mission in the world! Do it, first of all, trying to understand what the call is for you, unique for each one, and value its greatness' (Ramos, 2026). The mission is not a generic category but a particular call, and the joy Leo names (the 'true joy of living') is located precisely there, at the point where a person's deepest longings meet the specific task they were made for.
The criterion is not comfort. It is correspondence: between what a person most wants and what God is asking. Leo's closing words to the young people of San Marino echoes the repeted pontifical appeal: 'Open the door of your heart, always listen to Jesus Christ and never be afraid to listen to what Jesus wants to say to each of you.'(Ramos, 2026). The happiness the Christian tradition has in view is found at that address. Not as a reward appended to obedience, but as the natural condition of a person whose longings are no longer confined to what is partial and immediate.
References
John Paul II. (1990). Redemptoris Missio (§39). Libreria Editrice Vaticana. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hfjp-iienc07121990redemptoris-missio.html
Leo XIV. (2025, October 4). Dilexi Te: Apostolic exhortation of the Holy Father Leo XIV on love for the poor. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html
Ramos, D. (2026, August 22). In San Marino, Pope Leo XIV tells young people: ‘We only find authentic freedom in Jesus Christ’. EWTN News. https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/in-san-marino-pope-leo-xiv-tells-young-people-we-only-find-authentic-freedom-in-jesus-christ
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