On a late November morning, 14-year-old Mia Smothers was a mini celebrity in the halls of Baltimore’s Mercy High School.
“Mia!” one girl in a plaid skirt shouted, beaming through braces. “When are you going to Indianapolis?”
“Are you so excited?” another asked as a gaggle formed around her.
The girls were in awe of their classmate who was selected, along with four other students from around the nation, to participate in a 45-minute video call with Pope Leo XIV at the National Catholic Youth Conference on Friday. The three-day event brings together Catholic teens to pray, listen to speakers and learn more about the religion.
Sitting in a conference room at the school earlier this week, Mia said she planned on asking Pope Leo about his vocation and his path to the priesthood. But when she rose from a blue armchair on the stage at the Indianapolis football stadium Friday morning, facing Leo on the screen, something else came to mind.
“In my experience, it’s been difficult to voice my mistakes,” Mia said. “Is it hard for you to accept God’s mercy when you make mistakes or feel like you’ve let people down?”
After answering an initial softball question from the event facilitator about the word he usually starts with on Wordle (he changes it up every time), he thought on Mia’s inquiry.
“The truth is that none of us is perfect,” Leo told her. “We sometimes do the opposite of what we know is right. But, there’s good news. Sin never has the final word. Whenever we ask for God’s mercy he forgives us. Pope Francis said that God never gets tired of forgiving.”
Leo encouraged Mia and the stadium full of young people watching to see themselves and their actions and decisions more holistically.
“It can be discouraging when we fall, but do not focus only on your sins,” Leo said. “Look to Jesus. Trust his mercy and go to him with confidence. He will always welcome you home.”
Though the event was scheduled for 45 minutes, Leo stayed on for about an hour. The conversation ranged from friendship to prayer to the ethics of using ChatGPT for homework help. The session concluded, as many hangouts with teenagers do, with a selfie — but with the pope on screen behind them.
“Leo. Leo. We love Leo,” the kids chanted at the end to send him off before he waved and popped off screen.
Mia’s question about mistakes may have surprised some of her Mercy High School classmates watching the live stream from the school auditorium Friday morning. The 14-year-old Harford County resident is a model student. She’s a volunteer altar server, an award-winning Girl Scout for her work painting park benches and a junior varsity cheerleader. Mia strives to be a role model for her nine siblings, she said.
The opportunity to chat with the pope came about when her youth group leader reached out to her about the program. She and her mom filled out a survey. She then went through an audition process that included reciting quotes from Leo and coming up with questions for him, Mia said.
Getting selected was a huge thrill. She said it felt divinely fated.
“You know when you look at someone and you’re like, I feel like they’d be a nice person, like a kind of grandpa kind of way? That’s what I feel like he is,” Smothers said of the first American pope, who officially began in the role in May. “I love this opportunity so I can learn more about him and I can just tell people about him.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge was keeping her selection in the program a secret ahead of the formal announcement.
“I was like, ‘Mommy! Call Grandpa. Call Auntie Musa. Call everybody,’” she recalled saying after she learned she was chosen.
That high quickly crashed upon learning from the bottom portion of the email that she was only meant to tell parents at first.
Mia initially planned to ask the Pope about his career path as she contemplates her own. She’s thinking of become a sister, an experience she hears is “like one big sleepover,” she said. She’s weighing joining a convent as a nun. Or, she may choose a different route completely and instead become a mom of six kids, “because that’s an even number,” she said.
As Smothers walked down the school halls flagged by friends days before the big call, she relished the distraction from her upcoming chemistry test and smiled sheepishly at her classmates, seemingly happy for now just to be a kid.
The post Here’s what a Maryland teen asked when she video chatted with the pope appeared first on Washington Post.
