The recent visit of Pope Leo XIV to the vessel Bel Espoir —the initiative driven by Cardinals Aveline and Omella— in Ostia, within the MED 25 project, has been presented as a great gesture in favor of peace in the Mediterranean. Young people from different religions and cultures traveling ports to dialogue, share, and sow hope: a narrative that sounds nice, but in practice reminds too much of a cocktail of good intentions without real roots.
Between the Quetzal Route and the Elcano
The project—which is presented as «The School of Peace in the Mediterranean»—reminds one of the old Ruta Quetzal, that youth expedition with globalist training vibes, and the training ship Elcano, the flagship of Spanish soft diplomacy. But here the script is different: universal fraternity, interreligious dialogue, multicultural encounters. A mix that sounds good in headlines, but that hardly responds to the real challenges of the Mediterranean: religious persecution, migrant mafias, wars, and sectarian violence.
As Specola commented, it is an “strange visit to a kind of ecclesiastical flotilla of Pope Leo XIV in Ostia”, a schooner that from March to October hosts 200 young people from all religions and cultures for peace workshops, conferences, and festivals. Father Alexis Leproux explained it without beating around the bush: “We have an interreligious and interdenominational dialogue dimension to demonstrate that we are children of the same Father”. All very inclusive, all very correct, all very woke.
A symbol of interreligious fraternity
It is presented as a great symbol of interreligious fraternity: Christians, Muslims, Jews, and young people from other traditions sailing together on the same ship as a metaphor for “coexistence”. But the underlying question remains the same: is that evangelization or simple ideological marketing? Because nowadays everything becomes an ideological instrument, and the risk of diluting the truth of the Gospel in ambiguous gestures is evident.
Lots of symbolism, little substance
The Pope has lent his image and presence, which grants media prestige, but one must ask: what remains when the echo of the speeches and the photos of the pontiff on deck fades? Will a few weeks of coexistence at sea really change the conflicts that bleed the shores of the Mediterranean? Or will it just be another episode of “postcard diplomacy”, destined to please headlines but without real impact on the underlying problems?
Instrumentalized youth
That young people from different countries sail together can be enriching. No one denies the value of human encounter. But when the idea is wrapped in a diffuse discourse of “reconciliation” without mentioning the real roots of the conflicts (Islamic terrorism, religious persecution, migrant mafias, geopolitical wars), there is a risk of instrumentalizing youth to give the appearance of action where there are only empty gestures.
A pastoral marketing route
The voyage of the Bel Espoir under the banner of MED 25 is born with a motto of peace, but threatens to founder in the sea of superficiality. The Mediterranean, with its thousands of deaths on migration routes, with its persecuted Christians, with tensions that are not resolved through summer coexistences, demands truth, justice, and authentic charity. Not spectacles halfway between the Ruta Quetzal and the training ship Elcano, disguised as youth pastoral care and used more as a symbol for the ideological engineering of interreligious fraternity.