Drugs and addiction are an “invisible prison” for their victims, Pope Leo XIV told to people marking the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Thursday.

Most of them came from Italy’s San Patrignano community, that works with those suffering from drug addiction and offers them rehabilitation.

One member, Paola Clericuzio, addressed the pope during the meeting.

When she was just 18, she started using cocaine because of her boyfriend.

“I didn’t want to be below him and I decided to be like him through alcohol, joints and drugs,” she told the pope.

It wasn’t easy, but Paola said the community helped her learn how to get back to dancing, singing, and school.

“I’m starting to understand that true love is something else, starting first of all to love myself,” she said.

Leo said the presence of the San Patrignano community was “a testimony of freedom.”

“Drugs and addiction are an invisible prison that you, in different ways, have known and fought, but we are all called to freedom. As I meet you, I think of the abyss of my heart and of every human heart. It is a Psalm, that is, the Bible, that calls the mystery that dwells in us an ‘abyss.’ Saint Augustine confessed that only in Christ did the restlessness of his heart find peace. We seek peace and joy, we thirst for them. And many deceptions can delude and even imprison us in this quest,” he said.

The pontiff said today they are engaged in a battle that cannot be abandoned “as long as, around us, anyone is still imprisoned in the various forms of addiction.”

“Our fight is against those who make their immense business out of drugs and every other addiction – think of alcohol or gambling. There are huge concentrations of interest and extensive criminal organizations that states have a duty to dismantle,” Leo said, adding it is easier “to fight against their victims.”

“Too often, in the name of security, war is waged against the poor, filling prisons with those who are merely the final link in a chain of death. Those who hold the chain in their hands instead manage to gain influence and impunity,” he said.

“Our cities must not be freed of the marginalized, but of marginalization; they must be cleared not of the desperate, but of desperation,” the pope said.

He told the young people they are not spectators of the renewal the earth so badly needs: “You are protagonists.”

“Jesus, who was denied, invites all of you, and if you have felt rejected and spent, you are now no more. Your mistakes, your sufferings, but above all your desire for life, make you witnesses that change is possible,” Leo said.

After the meeting, Paola said speaking to Pope Leo caused a “unique emotion” and added the pope demonstrated “the importance of the union that must exist between us young people to overcome the problem.”

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