During the Angelus, Pope Francis noted the many "examples of young people who found the meaning and joy of life in Jesus” through other young people. A Hail Mary is dedicated to the missionaries who, “far from their homeland”, spent a lifetime proclaiming the Gospel. “The way to serve is the most effective antidote against the disease of wanting to be first, the medicine for climbers, which infects many human contexts and does not even spare Christians, nor the Church hierarchy.” Jesuit priest Tiburcio Arnaiz Muñoz, who was beatified yesterday in Spain, received an applause.
Together with the young, bringing the Gospel to everyone, even with AsiaNews
by Bernardo Cervellera | VATICAN – ASIAMuslim immigration in Europe is increasingly fundamentalist and the difference between "moderate" and "jihadist" Islam is getting narrower. The European intellectual world, afraid of inadvertently serving the aims of a xenophobic right, is silent on the violence and on the need for a reform of Islam. There is an urgent need to save young Muslims from fundamentalism. The majority of Muslims are still in a logic of conquest, invasion and Islamization of Europe.
The Church must broaden the role of women and young people. In Ukraine, the war has generated a certain dislike for the Church. Poor access to education for young people in some countries like Madagascar can hinder the promotion of evangelical values. Metropolitan Hilarion of the Moscow Patriarchate spoke at the Synod.
The conference aims to be a contribution to the Synod on young people taking place in the Vatican. Testimonies from Iraq, China, Cambodia, Brazil, Hong Kong. Direct experiences of missionaries who "put themselves alongside" the sufferings, difficulties and joys of the new generations, not content with merely studying them.
At the general audience Francis said that Jesus gave the Fifth Commandment a deeper meaning: "if killing means destroying, suppressing, eliminating someone, then not killing means caring, valuing, including. And even forgiving". "Not loving is the first step to killing; and not killing is the first step to loving ".
A PIME missionary speaks, with his own vocation as an example, about today’s young people, who go beyond speeches and seek human relationships built on trust. “What convinced me were not so many good speeches, what convinced me were credible men, men whose life spoke of the Gospel”.
A Salesian educator talks about his interactions with young people in the metropolis and with students from mainland China. Expressing love for Christ through witnesses and fellow Christians is urgent. The maturing of the faith in young people is delayed by making compromises with those who hold economic and political power.
Making an appeal for support to the mission to every people that does not know Jesus Christ, we can be a "bridge" between generations, helping to discover one’s task, vocation and missionary consecration in the world. AsiaNews is part of this service to the mission, for young people and others.
The Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops writes an open letter to the former nuncio to Washington. In it, he describes the former nuncio’s accusations as a baseless “political manoeuvre”. “I cannot understand how you could have allowed yourself to be convinced of this monstrous accusation which has no standing,” he writes.
Chinese faithful, official and underground communities, express their feelings about the present and the future of the Sino-Vatican provisional agreement. Many ask for the publication of the agreement document; others that bishops held in prison are freed and that the unofficial bishops are recognized by the government. The fear that China will belittle the Vatican. Fidelity to the Pope and to the unity of the Church, but concern for the rise in "collaborator" bishops.
For the optimists the provisional agreement is "historic"; for the pessimists it is the beginning of the total sell out of the Church to the Party. The Pope is involved in naming bishops. But we know nothing of a right of veto. The lifting of excommunications is good, but the faithful expect a public request for forgiveness. China has not asked for a break with Taiwan as a prior condition. Praise for Lithuanian martyrs, amid silence on the Chinese ones.
