by Paolo Affatato
Vatican City – “Making the world a garden”. According to Bishop Paul Kyung-sang Lee, General Coordinator of the Local Organizing Committee, this is the mission of the next World Youth Day , which will be held in Seoul in August 2027. It is not a matter of “escaping from a wounded and divided world”, but of “committing ourselves to transforming it, recognizing the dignity of every person and rebuilding relationships based on fraternity”. Speaking at the conference “WYD Seoul 2027: A Global Festival of Hope”, organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to the Holy See on November 11 at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, Bishop Lee recalled that, in a Korea still bearing the wounds of division and a war that has never formally ended, WYD takes on particular significance as an event dedicated to peace and reconciliation.
The theme chosen for WYD, “Take courage! I have overcome the world” , is closely connected with this vision. The Korean Church is preparing to welcome young people from across the world to a country whose history has been marked by division, war and an unfinished process of reconciliation.
Bishop Lee spoke of “making the world a garden”, using the term “Edenization” , to describe a task entrusted to young people: not to imagine an abstract world, but to transform the reality around them, marked by loneliness, inequality, conflict and division, through encounters that recognize in every other person someone endowed with the same dignity. “When we pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ – this is Edenization. This is the prayer we are seeking to put into practice,” Bishop Lee observed.
“WYD Seoul 2027,” he continued, “can become an opportunity for young people to recognize something of themselves in one another. Many come from places where the Church is small, where the faith is silently handed down quietly by people whom the world may never notice. But Seoul can bring this experience together. It can make it visible. In one place, at one moment. And grace can work in ways we do not immediately recognize. Perhaps Seoul can help us discover that the signs of enduring grace can sometimes appear where we least expect them.”
In this context, the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the Holy See, Shin Hyung-sik, who organized the event, described WYD Seoul as “an opportunity to bring different people and worlds together”. “Seoul will become a great meeting place, overcoming divisions between Korea and the world, between different religions and cultures, and between generations and regions,” he said. He added: “Hope will radiate from Seoul to the world, and from the world to Seoul.”
The young people arriving in Korea will be invited to “meet one another, engage in sincere dialogue, pray side by side and become true companions of peace”. This vision places WYD within a broader perspective: an encounter between generations and cultures capable of becoming a tangible experience of fraternity.
Emphasizing Bishop Lee’s remarks, Shin pointed out that WYD Seoul will be “the first World Youth Day to be celebrated in a country where Catholics are not the majority and in a non-European language”. For this reason, he said, it will also bear witness to how “the Gospel has taken root in the cultural richness of Asia”.
One further theme emerged clearly from the various speakers: peace. Ambassador Shin described Seoul as a place from which “a universal message of peace can be sent from the Korean Peninsula to the world”, expressing the hope that the presence of young people and the Pope will help open a new chapter for peace in East Asia. The context of WYD is, in fact, a peninsula that remains divided between North and South Korea. The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, but no peace treaty has ever followed. The division therefore continues to shape the lives of millions of people.
Along the same lines, Father Marco In-kook Kim, representing the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice, reflected on the history of the Korean Church and its close connection with the pursuit of justice, freedom and peace. The memory of the martyrs and the experience of a Christian community that has endured persecution, authoritarianism and division constitute a valuable resource for understanding the mission of young people in today’s world.
Father Marco In-kook Kim recalled how the community-centred ethic of Uri , the ancient philosophical wisdom rooted in human dignity , and the transformation of the historical suffering of Han into Heung provided fertile ground for the inculturation of the Good News.
“Like a grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies in order to bear much fruit ,” he emphasized, “the legacy of a Church that has given its life for its brothers and sisters will become, for the young people gathering in Seoul, an inexhaustible source of moral strength and spiritual vitality, enabling them to reject every compromise with injustice and bear witness to the Kingdom of God.”
In his concluding remarks, Seong-hoon Lee, Ambassador for Human Rights, Peace and Democracy at the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “WYD Seoul is called to become an authentic kairos, proclaiming a ‘peace that is unarmed and disarming’”, echoing the expression used by Pope Leo XIV.
“Authentic reconciliation,” he said, “does not come to an end when hostilities cease. Rather, it takes root when we disarm our hearts, freeing them from resentment, fear, distrust and hateful language, and recognize in the other not an enemy to be defeated, but a brother or sister with whom we share our journey.”
The border along the 38th parallel and the Demilitarised Zone , which divides the Korean Peninsula between North and South, should therefore be transformed from a symbol of division into “a pilgrimage sanctuary and a ‘school of peace’ for young people from around the world, where they can remember the wounds of war and learn to care for creation and forgiveness”.
Dialogue, solidarity and fraternity, together with the commitment of young people through WYD, can offer renewed hope and make Korea “a prophecy for the world”, he said, helping to build a future of peace and reconciliation.
The significance of WYD Seoul, then, will lie not merely in the scale of a major international event, expected to draw hundreds of thousands of young people, but in its potential to transform a land marked by division into a place of encounter. This is precisely the meaning of the expression “Making the world a garden”: the younger generations become promoters and builders of a peace rooted in listening, solidarity and fraternity.
In this sense, as Ambassador Shin observed, Korea can become the place from which “hope radiates” towards the world, offering a human and spiritual experience in which young people from every continent can discover that borders are not necessarily destined to become walls, but can instead serve as channels for exchange, human, social and spiritual connection, friendship and fraternity.
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