Pope Francis opens annual Diocese of Rome pastoral
conference
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis made his second visit to
Rome’s Cathedral, St. John Lateran, in as many days on Monday evening to open
the Diocese of Rome’s annual pastoral conference.
Ahead of his visit, the Holy Father met with a group of
refugees who have been hosted by some of the thirty-eight Roman parishes and
religious communities who responded to his 2015 appeal that parishes to do
their part by hosting those persons fleeing war and poverty.
Pope Francis opened Rome’s annual diocesan meeting on Monday
evening with a reflection on how to accompany parents in educating their
adolescent children.
Offering several “assumptions” for this aspect of pastoral
care, the Bishop of Rome invited the city’s pastors to think in the Roman
dialect, that is, with the faces of their flocks fixed in their minds.
“Family life and the education of adolescents in a big
metropolis like this requires particular attention," he said. "The
complexity of the capital does not admit of reductive syntheses, but stimulates
us to think in the form of a polyhedron, in which every neighborhood finds its
own echo in the diocese”.
Pope Francis then reflected on the modern experience of
being “uprooted”.
He said “an uprooted society or uprooted family is a family
without a history, memory, or roots… For this reason one of the first things we
must think about is how to provide roots and relationships and how to promote a
vital network that allows them to feel at home.”
The Pope said the adolescent experience is one of tension
and transition between childhood and adulthood.
He called this a precious and difficult time in which the
whole family is called to grow.
And he invited the Roman pastors not to treat adolescence as
a “pathology to be medicated”; rather, he called it “a normal part of growth,”
since “where there is life there is movement and change”.
The Holy Father said this offered parents a unique
opportunity to stimulate young people by involving them in projects that
challenge them to reach their full potential.
In conclusion, Pope Francis said one of the greatest threats
to the education of teenagers is the idea of “eternal youth”.
He said when adults want to stay young and young people want
to be adults there is a hidden risk of leaving teenagers out of their own
growth processes, because parents have taken their place.
This, the Pope said, deprives teenagers of an experience of
confrontation necessary for growth into adulthood.
(Devin Sean Watkins)
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