Pope to youth: go against the flow; be courageous, creative

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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