Rome gears up for Holy Year's monumental Catholic youth rally in scorching temperatures

ROME (AP) — Half a million young people are expected to pour into Rome next week for the biggest event of the 2025 Holy Year: a weeklong Jubilee celebration for young Catholics that will sorely test their tolerance for heat and the Eternal City’s ability to provide public services, security and logistical support during its peak tourist season.

Officials said Wednesday the highlight of the celebration is the Aug. 2-3 vigil service, outdoor overnight slumber party and morning Mass presided over by Pope Leo XIV, the first massive gathering for history's first American pope. It's being held on the same dusty field on the outskirts of Rome where St. John Paul II led the 2000 World Youth Day, an even larger gathering of some 2 million young Catholics in that millennial Jubilee year.

With temperatures next weekend expected between 32C to 34C (90F to 93F), organizers have lined up five million bottles of water, 2,660 drinking water stations and 70 giant water cannons that are normally used for dust control during building demolitions to spritz the young pilgrims to try to keep them cool.

After attending a week of events around Rome’s center, they will begin arriving at the Tor Vergata field on Saturday afternoon and spend the night there before the morning Mass Sunday, with access in and out requiring a 5 kilometer (three-mile) hike at minimum from the nearest public transport hub.

Italian and Vatican organizers on Wednesday outlined plans for the gathering, which Rome authorities said represented the biggest technological setup ever in Italy.

Four thousand police and firefighters have been called up to provide security, with Spanish, French and Polish law enforcement agencies sending teams to help out, given the large number of pilgrims expected from those countries. Officials are closing the airspace over the Tor Vergata field to civilian aircraft and drones, and 122 surveillance cameras have been set up to keep watch on the proceedings.

“This is an event that because of its importance requires exceptional security measures,” Rome Prefect Lamberto Giannini told a Vatican press conference. “We don’t have any signs of negative attention to the event, but the international situation, the various tensions and the magnitude, significance and beauty of the event require us to be very careful.”

Some 68% of the young people who registered to attend hail from European countries, though pilgrims from 146 countries are expected, said the Vatican’s Jubilee chief, Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

The youth Jubilee comes at the halfway point in the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year, a once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism that brings millions of pilgrims to Rome. Fisichella said 17 million pilgrims had attended Jubilee events so far in 2025, representing more than half the 32 million expected.

The event has assumed many characteristics of a World Youth Day, the Catholic youth rally taking place every three years that was launched by John Paul and maintained by every pope since. Heat waves and the invariable health issues that accompany them have become an integral part of youth days, since they are always scheduled during summer when young people are typically on vacation.

But such Catholic Woodstocks have also produced some of the most memorable papal moments. Many faithful still remember John Paul telling the youngsters at Tor Vergata in 2000 that they were “sentinels of the morning” at the dawn of the third millennium, Pope Benedict XVI braving a violent storm in Madrid in 2011 to continue praying, and Pope Francis telling young people in Lisbon in 2023 that everyone -- “todos, todos, todos” – is welcome in the Catholic Church.

The yearlong Jubilee, which was preceded by two years of intense construction projects around Rome, has added even more strain on Rome’s public services beyond the normal tourist high season. To spare the congested city center, some 20,000 people will be housed on the grounds of Rome’s old convention center on the city's outskirts, while another 40,000 will be housed in some of the 429-plus schools and 360 parishes around Rome that have offered to take them in.

In addition to law enforcement, 3,000 civil protection volunteers, 500 Vatican volunteers and 4,300 Jubilee “stewards” will be on hand to shepherd the young people around. A medevac helicopter, 43 ambulances, and 10 mobile health positions will be at the Tor Vergata field in case pilgrims fall ill. Rome’s notoriously insufficient public transport system is being reinforced to provide nearly around-the-clock service and sanitation workers are clocking overtime to the tune of 4,600 shifts.

There will be 2,760 portable toilets, plus 158 for disabled people, spread over the event space of 52 hectares (128 acres), officials said.

“This collective effort is a big institutional test,” acknowledged the vice president of the Lazio region, Roberta Angelilli.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

FILE - Pilgrims attend a mass presided by the Pope Francis at the Parque Tejo in Lisbon celebrating the 37th World Youth Day on Aug. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - Young people rest at the Parque Tejo in Lisbon as they wait for the start of a vigil with Pope Francis, ahead of the 37th World Youth Day, on Aug. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Ana Brigida, File)

FILE - Pilgrims greet Pope Benedict XVI in his vehicle as he arrives at Cuatro Vientos, near to Madrid, Spain, on Aug. 21, 2011. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, File)

Pope Leo XIV waves to faithful at the end of the noon Angelus prayer in the square in front of the Apostolic Palace for in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE - Pilgrims wait for Pope Benedict XVI's arrival at Cuatro Vientos airport in Madrid, on Aug. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea have seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says has ties to Venezuela, part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.

The U.S. Coast Guard boarded the tanker, named Veronica, early Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on social media. The ship had previously passed through Venezuelan waters and was operating in defiance of President Donald Trump’s "established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” she said.

U.S. Southern Command said Marines and sailors launched from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to take part in the operation alongside a Coast Guard tactical team, which Noem said conducted the boarding as in previous raids. The military said the ship was seized “without incident.”

Several U.S. government social media accounts posted brief videos that appeared to show various parts of the ship’s capture. Black-and-white footage showed at least four helicopters approaching the ship before hovering over the deck while armed troops dropped down by rope. At least nine people could be seen on the deck of the ship.

The Veronica is the sixth sanctioned tanker seized by U.S. forces as part of the effort by Trump’s administration to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s oil products and the fourth since the U.S. ouster of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid almost two weeks ago.

The Veronica last transmitted its location on Jan. 3 as being at anchor off the coast of Aruba, just north of Venezuela’s main oil terminal. According to the data it transmitted at the time, the ship was partially filled with crude.

Days later, the Veronica became one of at least 16 tankers that left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine that U.S. forces have set up to block sanctioned ships, according to Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship movements.

The ship is currently listed as flying the flag of Guyana and is considered part of the shadow fleet that moves cargoes of oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.

According to its registration data, the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, owned and managed by a company in Russia. In addition, a tanker with the same registration number previously sailed under the name Pegas and was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for being associated with a Russian company moving cargoes of illicit oil.

As with prior posts about such raids, Noem and the military framed the seizure as part of an effort to enforce the law. Noem argued that the multiple captures show that “there is no outrunning or escaping American justice.”

Speaking to reporters at the White House later Thursday, Noem declined to say how many sanctioned oil tankers the U.S. is tracking or whether the government is keeping tabs on freighters beyond the Caribbean Sea.

“I can’t speak to the specifics of the operation, although we are watching the entire shadow fleet and how they’re moving,” she told reporters.

But other officials in Trump's Republican administration have made clear they see the actions as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.

Trump met with executives from oil companies last week to discuss his goal of investing $100 billion in Venezuela to repair and upgrade its oil production and distribution. His administration has said it expects to sell at least 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil.

Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to show the Veronica is the fourth, not the third, tanker seized by U.S. forces since Maduro’s capture and the ship also has been known as the Gallileo, not the Galileo.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with reporters at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at Harry Reid International Airport, Nov. 22, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File)