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MEETING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE AND FAMILIES
Piazza Politeama
"Do not yield to the suggestions of the Mafia, which is a way of death, incompatible with the Gospel, as your bishops have told you so many times!"
- Benedict XVI to the young people of Sicily
Oct. 3, 2010
The streamer carries the pastoral motto of the Sicilian youth for the triennium: SI FIDA DI TE! - 'Have trust in yourself'
It's frustrating that these are all the pictures available so far from the newsphoto agencies from this event. No crowd shots other than the one general shot from the rear.
Benedict XVI condemns the Mafia
Translated from
Oct. 3, 2010
Applause and shouts of approval followed the words that Benedict XVI said about the Mafia during his meeting with representatives of Sicilian youth at Piazza Politeama.
The Pope was interrupted twice with acclamation - after saying that "The Mafia is a way of death, incompatible with the Gospel".
Galeazzi is the Vaticanista for La Stampa. His blog entry is rather lengthy, and contains generous exceprts from the Pope's address. I just wanted to post his lead ASAP because of the implications in the Anglophone news agency coverage of the Mass this morning that somehow Benedict XVI was unable to denounce the Mafia by name....]
Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address at Piazza Politeama. All of the Holy Father's texts today were very beautiful, as usual - great models of pastoral discourse, in which he manages to be both one's local pastor as well as the Universal Pastor. But this last one is extraordinary because he takes off from the example of the newly beatified Chiara Badano, who embodies very well the model of holiness that the Pope urges on everyone.
Dear young people and dear families of Sicily:
I greet you with great affection and joy! Thank you for your joy and your faith.
This meeting with you is the last event of my visit today to Palermo, but in a certain sense, it is the central one, because it was the occasion for the invitation extended to me - to your regional meeting of young people and families.
So I should start by thanking, first of all, Mons. Mario Russotto, Bishop of Caltanissetta, who is the responsible official for the pastoral care of young people and families at the regional level, and then the two young people Giorgia and David [who delivered greetings in the name of the gathering].
Dear friends, your greeting was more than just that - it was a sharing of faith and hope. I thank you from my heart.
The Bishop of Rome, wherever he goes, confirms Christians in their faith, but returns home confirmed in his faith, by your joy, by your hope!
Therefore, young people and families, let us take advantage of this encounter, of being together, which cannot be simply circumstantial or functional. It has a meaning, a human value, that is Christian and ecclesial.
And I wish to start off not with any reasoning, but with a testimony, of a story that was lived and is most relevant.
I think all of you know that last Saturday, September 25, in Rome, an Italian girl was proclaimed Blessed, and her name was Chiara Badano. I invite you all to get to know her: her life was brief but it is a stupendous message.
Chiara was born in 1981 and died in 1990 from an incurable illness. Nineteen years which were full of life, of love, of faith. And the last two years, also full of pain, but always borne in love and in the light, a light that radiated around her and came from within her, from her heart filled with God.
How was it possible? How could a girl of 17 live that kind of suffering, without human hope, but spreading love, serneity, peace, faith?
Obviously, it was the grace of God, but this grace was also prepared for and accompanied by human collaboration: that of Chiara herself, certainly, but also of her parents and friends.
First of all, her parents and her family. Today, I wish to underscore that in particular. The parents of Blessed Chiara Badano are alive. They were in Rome for the beatification - I met them later personally - and they are witnesses to the fundamental fact that explains everything: their daughter was filled with the light of God.
This light, which comes from faith and love, is one that they lit in her: Father and mother lit the flame of faith in the soul of their daughter and helped Chiara to keep that flame always alive, even in the difficult moments when she was growing up, but above all, during her great and long trial by suffering. Just as it was for the Venerable Maria Carmelina Leone who died at age 17.
This, dear friends, is the first message that I wish to leave you: the relationship between parents and children, as you know, is fundamental, but not only out of tradition, and rightly so, a tradition that I know is very much felt by Sicilians.
But there is something else that Jesus taught us: the torch of faith that is transmitted from one generation to the next. That flame which is present in the rite of Baptism, when the priest says: "Receive the light of Christ - the Paschal sign... a flame that you must nourish".
The family is fundamental because it is where the perception of the meaning of life first germinates. It germinates in the relationship with mother and father, who are not masters of their children's lives, but the first collaborators of God in the transmission of life and faith.
This happened in an exemplary and extraordinary way in the family of Blessed Chiara Badano, but it also happens in many families. Sicily has splendid examples of young people who grew like beautiful luxuriant plants, after having sprouted in the family, with the grace of the Lord and human collaboration.
I can think of Blessed Pina Suriano; Venerable Maria Carmelina Leone and Venerable Maria Magno, a great educator; the Servants of God Rosario Livatino, Mario Giouseppe REstivo, and so many young people that you know!
Often their actions are not known, because bad deeds make more noise, but they are the strength and the future of Sicily. The image of a tree is very significant for representing man. The Bible uses it, for example, in the Psalms.
Psalm 1 says: Blessed is the man who meditates on the law of thr Lord because he is "like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season" (v. 3).
These 'streams of water' can be the 'river' of tradition, the 'river' of faith from which we draw the lymph of life.
Dear young people of Sicily, be like trees that have roots in the 'river' of goodness. Do not be afraid to oppose evil! Together, you will be like a forest that grows, a silent force capable of bearing fruit, of bringing life and of renewing your land in a profound way.
Do not yield to the suggestions of the Mafia, which is a way of death, incompatible with the Gospel, as your bishops have told you many times.
The Apostle Paul takes up the image of the tree in his Letter to the Colossians, where he exhorts Christians to be "rooted and founded in Christ, firm in the faith" (cfr Col 2,7).
You know that these words are the theme of my Message for World Youth Day in Madrid next year.
The image of the tree tells us that each of us needs fertile ground in which to send down our roots, ground that is rich with nutritive substances which make the person grow: these are the Christian values, above all, love and faith, knowing the true face of God, awareness that he loves us infinitely, faithfully, patiently, to the point of giving his life for us.
In this sense, the family is a 'little church', because it transmits God, it tasnsmits the love of Christ, by virtue of the sacrament of matrimony.
The divine love that has united man and woman and that has made them parents is capable of inspiring in the hearts of their children the sprout of faith, the light of the profound meaning of life.
And here we come to another important element which I can only cite briefly: the family, although it is a 'little church', must live within the 'great Church', that is, within the family of God which Christ came to form.
Here, too, we have testimony from Blessed Chiara Badano, and all the young saints and blesseds: together with our original family, the great family of the Church is fundamental, as it is encountered and experienced in the parish, in the diocese.
For Blessed Pina Suriano, it was Catholic AC\ction - which is widely present in this land. For Blessed Chiara Badno, it was the Focolari movement. Indeed, even church movements and associations do not serve themselves but Christ and the Church.
Dear friends, I know your difficulties in the present social context, which are the difficulties of all young people and families today, particularly in southern Italy.
i also know the commitment with which you have sought to act and face these problems, alongside your priests, who are, for you, fathers and brothers in the faith, as Don Puglisi was.
I thank God that I have met you, because wherever there are young people and families who choose the way of the Gospel, there is hope. And you are a sign of hope not only for Sicily but for all Italy.
I have brought to you an example of holiness, and you are offering me yours: the faces of so many young people of this land who have loved Christ with evangelical radicalness, and your own faces, as in a mosaic.
This is the greatest gift that we have received: to be a Church, to be, in Christ, a sign and instrument of unity, of peace, of true freedom. No one can take this power away from us.
Take courage, dear young people and families of Sicily! Be saints! In the school of Mary, our Mother, put yourself at the full disposal of God, let yourselves be shaped by his Word and his Spirit, so that you may remain, even more, salt and light in your beloved land. Amen.
10/4/10
P.S. Making up for what the news agency photos did not show are these photos from
Below, the Pope thanks the youth reps David and Giorgia who spoke for their colleagues:
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/10/2010 15:45] |