00 10/04/2013 20:12



This is really a companion post to Benedict XVI's extemporaneous reflection on the 'peripheries' that I posted yesterday, but I did not add it on yesterday, because my main point was to recall how Benedict XVI spoke - completely off the cuff and taking his cue from a word used in a question posed to him by a young couple from Bari- about the 'peripheries' of contemporary life in a wider context long before the word 'peripheries' was picked up from Pope Francis's vocabulary and celebrated by the MSM as though no other Pope before him had ever thought about it.

First, the text of the Pope's address to the young people who gathered for a prayer vigil on the Plain of Montarso ourside Loreto
on Sept. 1, 2007. As usual, he is at his pastoral 'best of the best' whenever he speaks to young people in a language that is direct, intimate, loving and very clear:

BENEDICT XVI'S ADDRESS TO ITALIAN YOUTH
Loreto, Sept. 1, 2007

My dear young people who make up the hope of the Church in Italy!

I am happy to meet you in this quite singular place, on this special evening, rich with prayers, song, silences, hopes and profound emotions.

This valley, where in the past, even my beloved predecessor John Paul II met most of you probably, has become your agora, your public square, without walls or barriers, in which thousands of roads converge and depart.

I have listened with attention to those who spoke in the name of all of you. In this place of peaceful, authentic and joyous encounter, you have arrived for thousands of different reasons: some because you belong to a group, some invited by friends, some because of intimate conviction, some with some doubts in your hearts, some out of simple curiosity.

But whatever reason led you here, I can say that it is the Holy Spirit who brought us here together. Yes, the Spirit guided you here. You have come here with your doubts and certainties, your joys and concerns. And now, it is up to you to open your hearts and offer everything to Jesus.

Tell him: "Here I am - certainly not yet as you would want me to be, I cannot even understand all of me myself, but with your help, I am ready to follow you. Lord Jesus, tonight, I wish to speak to you, adopting the interior attitude and the trustful abandon of that young girl who, more than 2000 years ago, said Yes to the Father who chose her to be your Mother."

The Father chose her because she was meek and obedient to His will. Like her, like the young Mary, each of you, my dear young friends, must tell God with faith: "Here I am - be it done to me according to your word."

What an amazing spectacle of young and engaged faith we are living tonight! Tonight Loreto has become, thanks to you, the spiritual capital of the youth - the center of convergence for the multitudes of young people who inhabit the five continents.

At this moment, we feel surrounded by the expectations and hopes of millions of young people of the whole world. Right now, some are staying up, some are sleeping, some are studying or working. Some are hopeful and others are desperate; some believe, and others cannot get themselves to believe; some love life while others are wasting it.

I would like my words to reach everyone: the Pope is close to you, he shares your joys and your pains; above all, I share your most intimate hopes; and for each of you, I ask the Lord the gift of a full and happy life, a life that is rich in sense, a true life.

Unfortunately today, not unusually, a full and happy existence is seen by many young people as a difficult dream, and sometimes almost unrealizable. So many of your contemporaries look at the future with apprehension and ask themselves many questions.

They are concerned about how to fit themselves into a society marked by numerous and grave injustices and sufferings. How to react to the selfishness and violence which often seem to predominate. How to give a sense of fullness to life.

With love and conviction, I repeat to you, who are present here, and through you, to your contemporaries around the world: Do not be afraid! Christ can fulfill the most intimate aspirations of your heart. Are there are unreliable dreams when it is the Spirit of God who inspires and cultivates them in the heart? Is there anything that could dampen our enthusiasm if we are united with Christ? Nothing and no one, the Apostle Paul would say, can ever separate us from the love of God, in Jesus Christ, our Lord (cf Rom 8,35-39).

Allow me to repeat this to you tonight: if yo0u stay one with Christ, each of you can do great things. That is why, dear friends, you should not be afraid to dream with open eyes about great plans for good, and you should not allow yourselves to be discouraged by difficulties.

Christ has confidence in you and he wants you to realize each of your noble dreams for authentic happiness. Nothing is impossible for whoever trusts in God and entrusts himself to him.

Look at the young Mary! The Angel proposed to her something truly inconceivable: to participate in the most intimate way possible in God's greatest plan, the salvation of humanity. Before such a proposal, Mary was troubled, aware of the smallness of her being compared to God's omnipotence, and so she asked: How is it possible, why me? But she was willing to fulfill the divine will, and readily gave her Yes, which changed her life and the story of all mankind. Thanks to that Yes, we are here together tonight.

I ask myself and you: Can the requests that God makes of us - no matter how demanding they may seem to be - ever equal that which God asked of the young Mary? Dear boys and girls, let us learn from Mary to say Yes, because she knows what it means to answer generously to the requests of the Lord.

Dear young people, Mary knows your most noble and deepest aspirations. Above all, she knows your great desire for love, your need to love and be loved. Looking at her, following her obediently, you will discover the beauty of love - not a throwaway love, fleeting and deceptive, imprisoned in a selfish and materialistic mentality - but true and profound love.

In the most intimate part of the heart, every boy and girl who faces life, cultivates the dream of a love which can give full sense to one's future. For many, this finds fulfillment in the choice of matrimony and forming a family in which the love between a man and a woman is lived as a reciprocal gift of faithfulness, as a definitive gift, sealed by the Yes pronounced before God on the day of matrimony, a Yes for all of one's life.

I know that this dream is becoming even more difficult to realize. How many failures of love surround us! How many couples give up and separate! How many families are breaking up! How many children, even among you, have seen the separation and divorce of their parents!

To whoever finds themselves in such sensitive and complex situations, I would like to say tonight: the Mother of God, the community of believers, the Pope, are near to you and pray that the crisis which threatens the family in our time does not become an irreversible failure.

May Christian families, with the help of Divine grace, stay faithful to that solemn pledge of love taken with such joy before the priest and the Christian community on the solemn day of matrimony.

In the face of such failures, this question is not infrequent: am I better than my friends and my parents who have tried and failed? Why should I succeed where others have given up? This human fear can hamper even the most courageous spirit, but on this night before you, at the foot of her Holy House, Mary repeats to each of you, dear young friends, the words which she herself heard the angel address to her: Have no fear! Do not be afraid! The Holy Spirit is with you and will never abandon you. Nothing is impossible to whoever trusts in God.

And this is valid for those who are destined for married life, and even more for those to whom God proposes a life of total detachment from earthly goods in order to dedicate themselves fulltime to his Kingdom.

Among you, there are those who are headed to the priesthood, towards the consecrated life, perhaps some who wish to be missionaries, even knowing what risks and how much risk this means. Think of the priests, the religious and the lay missionaries who have fallen in the trenches of love in the service of the Gospel.

About that life, Fr. Giancarlo Bossi can tell you so many things, he for whom we all prayed during his period of captivity in the Philippines, and whom we joyously welcome among us today. In him, I wish to greet and thank all those who spend their existence for Christ on the frontiers of evangelization.

Dear young people, if the Lord calls you to live more intimately in his service, then respond generously. You may be certain that a life dedicated to God is never spent in vain.

Dear young people, I end my words tonight, not without first embracing you with the heart of a father. I embrace you one by one, and I greet each of you from the heart.

I also greet the bishops present, starting with Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, president of the CEI, and Archbishop Gianni Danzi who is our welcoming host in his ecclesial community.

I greet the priests, the religious, the spiritual advisers who accompanied you here. I greet the civilian authorities and all who were in charge of realizing this event.

A little later tonight, we shall once again be reunited 'virtually' and we will see each other again tomorrow morning, after this night of vigil, for the high point of our encounter, when Jesus himself will be present in the Word and the mystery of the Eucharist.

I would also like to make an appointment to see you in Sydney, where within a year the next World Youth Day will be held. I know - Australia is very far away, and for Italians it is literally at the other end of the world.

Let us pray that the Lord who can work every wonder may grant to many of you the gift of being there. That he may grant it to me, and grant it to you. This is one of so many dreams that tonight, praying together, we will entrust to Mary.


The following article is also extraordinary because it was probably one of only two or three articles Marco Politi ever wrote during Benedict XVI's Pontificate that was in any way favorable - and this one is totally sympathetic, other than the expression 'iron Pope' used in the opening paragraph (an expression I don't think anyone else every used for Benedict XVI, about whom the media consensus changed, after the release of Deus caritas est, to the effect that this was not the Panzerkardinal or God's Rottweiler of media lore... And because Mr. Politi is a good reporter (perhaps a better reporter than analyst, when his analyses are tainted by prior obvious bias), his report captures the incredible electricity of the Youth Agora in Loreto, no less intense than the WYD in Cologne that preceded it, nor the WYD in Sydney that followed it....

The Pope among 400,000 youth:
'You must change the world'
He listens to their stories
and is clearly moved
By MARCO POLITI
Translated from

Sept. 2, 2007

LORETO - Tears well up in the light blue eyes of Benedict XVI. The iron Pope is moved while listening to the story of Ilaria from Rome, born into a troubled family, with a violent father who was often away, so that she had often wished she had never been born.

Then she meets a priest who not only prepares her for confirmation at a late age but also finds treatment for her [miscellaneous psychosomatic ailments, starting with anorexia]. Today, she is married and the mother of a two-year-old but she cannot forget that so many others her age 'are crying for help'.



Afterwards, Papa Ratzinger would hold her in a long hug. But meanwhile, he tells her and the 400,000 other young people present at the Plain of Montorso yesterday, "The world must be changed, and it is the mission of the youth to do that. Society needs solidarity, a sense of legality, as well as the creativity of everyone."

This interaction was the most immediate and refreshing in the Agora of Italian Youth, a two-day kermesse half prayer assembly, half mega-pop concert which has assembled some 400,000 young people here in Montorso just outside Loreto.

Young people who had been bivouacked under the sun for hours, waiting for the Pope's arrival - many with shirts off (males) and navels exposed, in a climate of 'everyone at the beach' (the Adriatic shore is a few hundred meters away), jumping and clapping as the tireless activities-dj tells them on the PA system.

The Agora is a mini-WYD planned by the Italian bishops conference following the formula for the Wojtylian megashows for the youth which were never entirely to Joseph Ratzinger's liking.

But the testimonials by some young people, which prompted questions posed directly to the Pope - there would have been more if the organizers had been more courageous* - gripped the Pope who ignored answers earlier prepared by his aides to answer them off the cuff.
[This was, in fact, a surprising disappointment yesterday, because the organizers had previously announced there would be a Q&A as the Pope has had previously with the youth of Rome, with seminarians and various local clergy. The Pope ended up answering only two questions - both were necessarily 'huge' but he did very well bringing them down to practical proportions.]

Luca from Rome spoke of a disoriented childhood lived in marginal and precarious conditions. Giovanna and Pietro of Bari spoke of their marginal suburb of San Paolo, describing these 'peripheries' without hope, inhabited by 'the discards of globalization' - one friend barely escapes the trap of chronic petty crimedoing by finding work, while another friend wastes her days waiting for a boyfriend who is in and out of the local jails. And another four friends are killed one day in a barroom brawl. How, they asked, is it possible to hope at all if reality just destroys every plan one has for life?

Sara of Genoa recounts how her family took in a street waif her age when they were both 7, but who never did well because he was convinced that "if one is born unfortunate, one will die unfortunate."

Sara tells the Pope: "It is not easy to speak about God to friends who feel they are at the margins of life. Many of them see the Church as a reality that judges young people harshly and opposes their desires for happiness and love. I believe in the God who has touched my heart, but I have so mich fear within me, and I feel my loneliness. Holiness, in this silence, where is God?"

Benedict XVI replies spontaneously. "All believers experience the silence of God. A book on Mother Teresa has just come out, and she, with all her charity and strength of faith, suffered from the silence of God." Great applause rose from the plain, and then they held their breath for the rest of the Pope's answer.

He recalled to them a Russian scientist who told John Paul II: "For me, as a scientist, God does not exist, but when I find myself amidst the majesty of the mountains, then I think God exists."` It is important, the pope told the young people, to know how to interpret a silent God because this also helps us to understand non-believers.

But besides learning how to accept a silent God, he said, we must also be able to listen and see - because God shows himself and speaks to us in creation, in the liturgy, in the good things of the world.

Yes, he said, it is difficult to speak of a God who is perceived only as an authority who imposes 'commandments', or of a Church that appears to be an institution :limiting freedom and imposing prohibitions."

But the Church, he said, is not a power center - it is a community of companions, fellow Christians. And in a world where political and economic institutions wield the real power, it is essential to rediscover asnd nurture the vital cells of society represented by the family and the church community.

"For the Church, there are no peripheries. Wherever Christ is, everyting is central." And the faith creates great networks of solidarity and courage which are centers against despair, because in the eyes of God, everyone is important and no one is peripheral.

Later, the Pope would come back to the theme of the family. He invites his audience not to give in to 'disposable' love, to be committed to a matrimony that lasts for all of one's life, not to allow couples to break up, and to do everything so that the crisis of the contemporary fmaily does not become an 'irreversible failure'.

As the sun set slowly over the plain of Montorso, the image of the Black Madonna of Loreto was borne in on a symbolic boat. Andrea Bocelli sang Gounod's Ave Maria.

Before the Pope left, the multitudes would once again chant his name in rhythm, 'BE-NE-DET-TO, BE-NE-DET-TO', as they had done throughout the afternoon.

In their ears, they would have retained yet another exhortation from the Pope - that they should know how to say Yes not only to matrimony but also to the priesthood if they heard the call, "because a life dedicated to God is never onde spent in vain ."

He cited missionary prist Fr. Giancarlo Bossi, who had come onstage to thank the Pope and the young people and all who prayed for him during his captivity by Muslim rebels in southern Philippines.

But the night had only just begun. From the Holy House of Nazareth in the Sanctuary of Loreto, the Pope would later be telecast to the assembly in Montorso to start off an all-night prayer vigil by the youth, with a prayer that he had composed specially for the Agora.

Before leaving Montorso, the Pope greeted the entertainers who were to take part in the show prepared by RAI state TV for primetime airing.

After that, the youth had a choice of eight 'fountains of light', or areas where they could reflect on isues regarding confession, problems of couples, personal issues, vocations. Volunteers went around making sure that those who had not made a recent confession took advantage of available confessors.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/04/2013 00:43]