Pope
to youth: go against the flow; be courageous, creative
(Vatican Radio) At the end of the first day of a two day
trip to Turin, Pope Francis met with tens of thousands of young people in the
city’s central square, Piazza Vittorio.
Pope Francis spoke to the young people “from the heart” for
more than half an hour, laying aside his prepared remarks (which he promised
would later be published). The Pope responded to questions from three young
people on the topics of love, life, and friendship.
Love, the Pope said, is concrete, and is seen more in
actions than in words. Love always communicates itself. Love, he continued, is
very respectful of persons, it does not use people, and so it is chaste.
The Holy Father also responded to a question about disappointments
in life. There are so many evils in the world. What can we expect of life, for
instance, in a world where there are so many wars? Pope Francis referred to
ongoing wars in Europe, in Africa, and in the Middle East; and to historical
violence such as the great tragedy in Armenia at the beginning of the century,
to the Shoah, and to the gulags in Soviet Russia. It is easy to grow
disillusioned with life, he said, when even today we live in a “culture of
waste.”
In the face of such evils, the Pope asked, how can we live a
life that does not disappoint? “We must go forward with our projects of
construction, and this life does not disappoint,” he said. We must help one
another. And to do this, Pope Francis told the young people, they must go
against the current, they must be courageous and creative.
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