Month: July 2023

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Young people today must be open to love and let themselves be led and accompanied by God in the face of life’s challenges, Pope Francis said.

In the second edition of the “Popecast,” produced by Vatican Media in Italian and released July 25, the pope responded to the stories of young people recorded ahead of World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, scheduled for Aug. 1-6.

The first episode of the Vatican Media’s podcast with Pope Francis was released in March, in which he looked back on the first 10 years of his pontificate.

The Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life also released a podcast series meant to talk about how its work concretely impacts the lives of people in the church. Its first episode released July 23 focuses on grandparents and the elderly.

Meanwhile, the Popecast’s latest episode focused on marginalized youth, and one person the pope heard from was Giona — Jonah in Italian — a transgender, homosexual and disabled Catholic who described how his faith helped him accept his identity and body despite his disability.

“The Lord always walks with us, even if we are sinners he comes toward us to help us,” the pope said after hearing Giona’s story. “The Lord loves us as we are. This is God’s crazy love.”

Like the prophet Jonah, “people are often stubborn,” he said, “and that stubbornness closes us” to God’s love. Yet the pope urged Giona to “not surrender” and recalled that “God always caresses us” and “walks with us,” even if it is sometimes difficult to feel.

The pope then listened to two young men share how they resorted to crime and violence in response to their troubled backgrounds. Both had experienced run-ins with the law and were now involved with the Kayros Association, a Catholic organization supporting young people in need near Milan.

People make progress in life “with successes and mistakes,” the pope said, and “many times society is cruel to us because one mistake characterizes us for our whole life.”

“You were not alone on your journeys, not even when you made terrible mistakes; the Lord was there, ready to take you by the hand, ready to lift you up ” Pope Francis said. “It was he who created the circumstances in history to lift you both up.”

The pope also told them to not be afraid to dream, calling dreams “seeds of hope, seeds of progress, of strength, to go forward.”

“God is present in every stage of life,” Pope Francis said after hearing the experience of Arianna, a healthcare worker who suffers from bipolar disorder.

She described living on a “seesaw” between having suicidal thoughts and feelings of extreme joy. The pope noted that life’s ups and downs can become a “labyrinth” with no way out, the pope said.

“Always look ahead and don’t lose sight of the horizon, because the horizon is what leads you forward,” he said. “God is the horizon and God is with you accompanying you.”

Pope Francis urged Arianna not to lose a sense of “the adventure of life” or “fall into the labyrinths of our consciousness, which don’t save us in the end.” He also asked that she continue pursuing medical treatment for any psychological conditions she may have.

Valeria, who will accompany a group of young people traveling to World Youth Day, shared that the young people she knows want the church as an institution to be coherent with the message of the Gospel, and that she sees the synod on synodality as a key step toward that result.

“The church is church when it walks, the contrary is a religious sect closed within itself,” the pope said in response. “Each time the church has closed itself it has ended poorly, it has ended up being infertile.”

Pope Francis stressed the need for fostering “unity among diversity” in the church, which he said is achieved by living coherently with the Gospel. “Each person lives life differently, in their own way, but if it is coherent with the Gospel it’s okay.”

“Many times in the church there are fights among little groups, one against the other, but on the morning of Pentecost everyone spoke differently but understood each other in unity,” he said. When a difference becomes akin to a political party, “it kills unity.”

Speaking to Giuseppe, who said he spends most of his time playing video games, the pope said his virtual relationships to other gamers and content creators are “sterile.” Pope Francis warned him against “becoming bored with yourself” and living his life “without poetry,” before encouraging him to “open a window” and look toward a horizon in life to pursue.

Turning to all young people, Pope Francis urged them to attend World Youth Day, responding to those who may not feel like going by saying “it is worth it to take the risk.”

“In life, who doesn’t take risks doesn’t move forward,” he said.

The pope also responded to an audio message from 9-year-old Alessandro asking if there would ever be a “World Children’s Day.”

“It would be nice,” the pope said, “and we can ask grandparents to organize it. I will think about it and see how to do it.”

“Say hello to your grandparents for me,” Pope Francis told him.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Gospel calls Christians to bring the elderly to the center of their lives and away from the margins of families, politics and financial markets that banish them as “unprofitable waste” in society, Pope Francis said.

“Let it not happen that by pursuing the myths of efficiency and performance at full speed we become unable to slow down to accompany those who struggle to keep up,” he said in his homily at a Mass for World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in St. Peter’s Basilica July 23.

“Please, let us mingle and grow together,” he said.

Elderly persons in wheelchairs were seated in the front row before the altar and alongside Pope Francis. Several grandparents with young children in tow were scattered among the estimated 6,000 people in attendance in the basilica.

“We need a new alliance between young people and the elderly,” Pope Francis told them in his homily, “so that the sap of those who have a long experience of life behind them will nourish the shoots of hope of those who are growing.”

“In this fruitful exchange we can learn the beauty of life, build a fraternal society and in the church we can allow for encounter and dialogue between tradition and the newness of the Spirit,” he said.

Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life – which organizes the world day – was the main celebrant at the altar. The theme for this year’s celebration was “His mercy is from age to age,” taken from St. Luke’s Gospel.

In his homily, the pope related the elderly’s role in society to the three parables Jesus tells in the day’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew.

In the first parable, the devil plants weeds among a wheat crop while the householder is asleep, but rather than tell his slaves to pull them up he allows them to grow until harvest for fear of uprooting the wheat with it.

“The good and the bad are intertwined to the point of appearing inseparable,” Pope Francis said. But, “Christians, enlivened by hope in God, are not pessimists, but neither are they naive people who live in a fairy-tale world, who pretend not to see evil and say ‘all is well.'”

“No, Christians are realists: they know there is wheat and weeds in the world,” he said.

The pope noted the common temptation to create a “pure” society and church that risks making people “impatient, intransigent, even violent toward those who have fallen into error.”

“In that way, together with the weeds we pull up the good wheat and block people from moving forward, from growing and changing,” he said. Instead, by “beating the temptation to divide the wheat from the weeds, we are called to understand the best ways and moments to act.”

The elderly, who have “already come a long way in life,” he said, are examples of embracing life’s beauty as well as its challenges.

“Old age is a blessed time also for this reason: it is the season to be reconciled, to look with tenderness at the light that has advanced despite the shadows, in the faithful hope that the good wheat sowed by God will prevail over the weeds with which the devil has wished to infest our hearts,” said the pope.

He also recalled the parable of the tiny mustard seed that grows into a large bush where birds make nests among its branches.

“At the beginning we are a small seed, then we are nourished by hopes, we fulfill projects and dreams, the most beautiful of which is becoming like that tree, which doesn’t live for itself but makes shade for who wants it and offers space for who wants to build a nest,” said Pope Francis.

He said that grandparents and grandchildren “grow together” like the tree and the birds that settle in its branches, where they “learn the warmth of home and experience the tenderness of an embrace.”

Urging the elderly and young people to engage with one another, the pope turned to the parable of the yeast in which a whole batch of bread is leavened by a small measure of yeast. He encouraged the young and elderly to “mix with one another” and to “come out from yourself to join with others.”

Such intergenerational interaction, he said, “defeats individualism and selfishness, and helps us generate a more humane and fraternal world.”

After Mass, five elderly people in St. Peter’s Basilica symbolically handed over a pilgrim’s cross to five young people traveling to World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, which is scheduled for Aug. 1-6. The gesture represents the elderly’s commitment to “pray for the departing youth and accompany them with their blessing,” the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life said in a statement.

Shortly after, Pope Francis appeared at the window of the papal studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square with a young person who was going to attend World Youth Day and his grandmother on either side of him. The pope noted the significance of a day dedicated to celebrating the elderly right before World Youth Day begins.

“May the closeness of these two days be an invitation to promote an new alliance between generations of which there is so much need; so that the future may be constructed together, in the sharing of experiences and reciprocal care between young people and the elderly,” he said after praying the Angelus.

Noting the strong heat waves in many countries and recent flooding in South Korea, Pope Francis called on governments to act concretely to reduce polluting emissions, and he asked the estimated 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square not to forget the ongoing migration crisis in northern Africa.