Pope Francis has called on hundreds of thousands of young pilgrims to not be “couch potatoes” but to take risks as they seek to build a better world.
Advertisement
“We cannot overcome hatred with more hatred, violence with more violence and terror with more terror”, said Francis. We came for another reason: “to leave a mark”, he said.
Francis is winding up his five-day stay in Poland on Sunday after joining hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world for Catholic celebrations.
That was his message to young people during Saturday’s prayer vigil at the 31st World Youth Day being held in the Polish city of Krakow and attended by some 1.6 million young people.
In a heartfelt appeal to the world’s young, he said it was up to them to fight xenophobia and “teach us how to live in diversity, in dialogue, to experience multiculturalism not as a threat, but an opportunity”.
The 28-year-old said he told them it was “important to be ourselves in these times, these crucial moments”.
(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia). Pope Francis prays during a prayer vigil on the occasion of the World Youth Days, in Campus Misericordiae in Brzegi, near Krakow, Poland, Saturday, July 30, 2016.
Our response to a world at war has a name: “its name is fraternity, its name is brotherhood, its name is communion, its name is family”.
He delivered it in his homily at Mass with the country’s bishops and 2,000 priests, religious and seminarians in the ornate shrine in Krakow dedicated to Saint John Paul II that was opened past year. On Friday he visited the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he met with concentration camp survivors as well as aging saviors who helped Jews escape certain doom.
Pope Francis told young people who flocked by the hundreds of thousands to his words Sunday that they need to “believe in a new humanity” stronger than evil, and cautioned against concluding that one religion is more violent than others.
Francis has heard about the tendency toward clericalism and resistance to change among numerous 156 bishops and 30,000 priests in this country where 90 percent of the people are Catholic and the faith is still strong and deep.
Young pilgrims have filled a massive meadow near Krakow in southern Poland for a Mass with Pope Francis, the last major event the pope will lead as he wraps up a five-day visit to Poland.
The pope used his several encounters with the young pilgrims – from mega-gatherings to a private lunch with only a dozen of them from five continents – to encourage a new generation to work for peace, reconciliation and justice.
Another young woman asked Francis for some advice and his answer was: “Don’t give up hope”, adding that it’s important for young people to be themselves “in these times, these crucial moments”. “I felt an incredible internal peace to meet him so closely”.
“Who Is Your Pope?” is both the title of their performance, but also a question they are trying to ask, surprised that the current head of the Catholic Church was not included in the official World Youth Day banners.
He issued the call as he celebrated a Mass in a shrine in Poland dedicated to the late Polish pope, St. John Paul II.
Nuns and priests, singing and waving little banners, greeted the pope as he entered the church in the Krakow suburb.
“That is the same thing that is happening here, especially because this World Youth Day is very much tied to the Year of Mercy” he said.
In the Church of the Relics, the lower of two churches in the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II that lies on a hill overlooking some shopping centers, is the container of blood drawn from him during medical care in the final weeks of his life in Rome.
Advertisement
Later he will visit the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II, near the Lagiewniki shrine, consecrated in 2013.
