VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis asked bishops to be bold, honest,
open-minded, charitable and, especially, prayerful as they begin a
three-week meeting on “young people, the faith and vocational
discernment.”
While many young people think no older person has
anything useful to teach them for living today, the pope said, the age
of the bishops, combined with clericalism, can lead “us to believe that
we belong to a group that has all the answers and no longer needs to
listen or learn anything.”
Pope Francis addressed the opening session of the Synod of Bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment at the Vatican Oct 3.Photo Credits: Paul Haring | Catholic News Service“Clericalism is a perversion and is the
root of many evils in the Church,” Pope Francis said Oct. 3 at the
synod’s first working session. “We must humbly ask forgiveness for this
and above all create the conditions so that it is not repeated.”
The
pope formally welcomed 267 bishops and priests as voting members of the
synod, eight fraternal delegates from other Christian churches and
another 72 young adults, members of religious orders and lay men and
women observers and experts at the synod, which will meet through Oct.
28.
He also thanked the thousands of young people who responded to
a Vatican questionnaire, participated in a presynod meeting in March or
spoke to their bishops about their concerns. With the gift of their
time and energy, he said, they “wagered that it is worth the effort to
feel part of the Church or to enter into dialogue with her.”
They
showed that, at least on some level, they believe the Church can be a
mother, teacher, home and family to them, he said. And they are
asserting that “despite human weaknesses and difficulties,” they believe
the Church is “capable of radiating and conveying Christ’s timeless
message.”
“Our responsibility here at the synod,” the pope said,
“is not to undermine them, but rather to show that they are right to
wager: It truly is worth the effort, it is not a waste of time!”
Pope
Francis began the synod with an invitation that every participant
“speak with courage and frankness” because “only dialogue can help us
grow.”
A willingness to “change our convictions and positions,” he said, is “a sign of great human and spiritual maturity.”
The
synod is designed to be an “exercise in discernment,” the pope told
them. “Discernment is ... an interior attitude rooted in an act of
faith.”
Listening to the Spirit, listening to God in prayer and
listening to the hopes and dreams of young people are part of the
Church’s mission, the pope said. The preparatory process for the synod
“highlighted a Church that needs to listen, including to those young
people who often do not feel understood by the Church” or feel they “are
not accepted for who they really are, and are sometimes even rejected.”
The
goal of the synod, Pope Francis said, is not to prepare a document —
synod documents, he said, generally are “only read by a few and
criticized by many” — but to identify “concrete pastoral proposals” that
would help all Church members reach out to, walk with and support the
faith of young people.
In other words, he said, the goal is “to
plant dreams, draw forth prophecies and visions, allow hope to flourish,
inspire trust, bind up wounds, weave together relationships, awaken a
dawn of hope, learn from one another and create a bright resourcefulness
that will enlighten minds, warm hearts, give strength to our hands and
inspire in young people — all young people, with no one excluded — a
vision of the future filled with the joy of the Gospel.”
Deacon
Javier Ayala of Santiago, Chile, a member of the Legionaries of Christ
who is studying in Rome, attended the synod’s opening Mass.
Deacon
Ayala, who is to be ordained a priest in Rome next year, assisted in
the presynod process of collecting thousands of responses to a
questionnaire and feedback via social media from young people; he also
took part in a presynod meeting of young people in Rome in March.
“The
Church is a mother and she knows that there are many young people
outside and wants to call them; she wants to invite them because (the
Church) isn’t just another institution. She wants to lead them to Jesus
Christ who is the way, the truth and the life,” he said.
“We
shouldn’t expect precise solutions from the synod nor calculations,” he
said. The point of the synod is “to keep reflecting on the best pastoral
ways to reach young people. I don’t think this is an ending point, but
rather a starting point that is part of the new evangelization of the
Church.”
Be lifeline of hope for youth alienated from Church, pope tells synod
VATICAN
CITY — Pope Francis urged synod fathers not to be crushed by “prophets
of doom,” but to be the signs of hope and joy for which today’s young
people yearn.
“Anointed by hope, let us begin a new ecclesial meeting,” he said in the homily at Mass Oct. 3, opening the Synod of Bishops.
Filled
with hope and faith, he said, the synod members can “broaden our
horizons, expand our hearts and transform those frames of mind that
today paralyze, separate and alienate us from young people, leaving them
exposed to stormy seas, orphans without a faith community that should
sustain them, orphans devoid of a sense of direction and meaning in
life.”
Among the hundreds of synod participants and thousands of
guests celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square were two bishops from
mainland China, the first from the communist country to attend a synod.
With his voice shaking, the pope offered them “our warm welcome: the
communion of the entire episcopate with the Successor of Peter is yet
more visible thanks to their presence.”
He reminded the bishops
that when most of them were young, Blessed Paul VI called on them during
the Second Vatican Council to lead the way in renewing the world
through Christ.
Quoting the soon-to-be saint’s message to young
people in 1965, the pope recalled how the Church was depending on them —
as young people of the day and the future of the Church — to “express
your faith in life” and faith in “a good and just God.”
Pope
Francis asked synod members to participate in the upcoming discussions
with an “attitude of docile listening to the voice of the Spirit” and to
each other “to discern together what the Lord is asking of His Church.”
With
love for the Gospel and the faithful, synod members must aim to follow
God’s will and “an even greater good that will benefit all of us.
Without this disposition, all of our efforts will be in vain.”
— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service