THE Archbishop of York has joined other church leaders in sending words of encouragement to a Taizé European Youth Meeting in Paris, attended by more than 15,000 young people.
The five-day gathering, which began last Sunday, was intended to send a “strong signal of dialogue and unity”, its organisers said.
It was hosted by different Christian denominations in 150 parishes, and included common prayers and 100 “thematic workshops” on faith and spirituality, solidarity and ecology, justice and peace, and art and culture .
In his message, Archbishop Cottrell said that he hoped that the meeting would foster “prayer, contemplation, and worship” at a time of “so much misunderstanding, polarisation, fear, and confusion”.
Pope Leo said that the hospitality shown to young people in Paris would send a “powerful message” after a year that had brought the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (News, 22 June 2025), but also “so many trials for our human family”.
Messages also came from the Conference of European Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Evangelical Alliance, and the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, who said that the search for “meaning, justice, peace, and community” in a world of “fragmentation and conflict” resonated strongly within the ecumenical movement.
Founded in 1940 in Nazi-occupied Burgundy by the Swiss Protestant Roger Schutz (Brother Roger), who was stabbed to death by an attacker during a prayer session in 2005, the Taizé Community is run by about 100 Roman Catholic and Protestant Brothers from 25 countries, linked by vows of celibacy and simplicity.
In separate messages to the Paris meeting, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople, said that the event would show that today’s youth were “not resigned to indifference or withdrawal”, and that fraternity was “not an abstract ideal, but a concrete vocation”.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said that he had personally “found fellowship, wisdom, and hope” during student visits to Taizé, and the president of the European Commission, Dr Ursula von der Leyen, told the meeting in a letter that Europe was experiencing “a difficult moment for finding answers”, but said that she was “deeply moved” that prayers and poems by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) had been included in some Taizé hymns and songs.
