From the westernmost corner of Europe, the Pope looks at the "old" continent, as he himself defines it, and asks to change "route". The world needs Europe but a Europe capable of being "bridges and peacemakers" , which looks at life with new eyes, because there are too many "empty cradles" and too many "abandoned elderly people".
These are the first words that Pope Francis spoke during his apostolic visit to Portugal . Then the warning against the scandals that "disfigure the face of the Church". And yesterday evening, at the end of the institutional meetings and with the Church, Pope Francis received at the Nunciature in Lisbon a group of 13 people, victims of abuse by members of the clergy, accompanied by some representatives of the institutions of the Portuguese Church in charge of the protection of minors.
"The meeting - they report from the Vatican - took place in an atmosphere of intense listening and lasted more than an hour".
“ROUTES OF PEACE” – In Lisbon , young people and flags from all over the world . The boys cheer him as he passes. "I will come back rejuvenated," Francis said, thinking of his fourth World Youth Day.
Concern about the war in Ukraine remains in the foreground. There is a lack of "courageous paths of peace" and the Pope asks Europe: "Where are you sailing towards, if you do not offer peace paths, creative ways to put an end to the war in Ukraine and the many conflicts that are bloodying the world?".
“It is worrying when one reads that in so many places - Pope Francis said in his first speech at the Belem Cultural Center - funds are continually invested in weapons rather than in the future of their children . I dream of a Europe, the heart of the West, which puts its ingenuity to good use in extinguishing outbreaks of war", "a Europe which includes peoples and persons, without chasing theories and ideological colonisations".
DEFEND LIFE – The Pope then asked to defend life. “I think of so many unborn children and the elderly left to themselves, of the difficulty of welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating those who come from afar and knocking on doors, of the loneliness of many families in difficulty in giving birth and raising children. Here too one would have to say: where are you sailing towards, Europe and the West, with the waste of the old, the walls with barbed wire, the massacres at sea and empty cradles?».
ENVIRONMENT – So a new appeal also for the environment, one of the key themes of this WYD in Lisbon: «The oceans are overheating and their depths bring to the surface the ugliness with which we have polluted our common home. We are turning vast reserves of life into plastic landfills. The ocean reminds us that human life is called to harmonize with an environment greater than us, which must be looked after with care, thinking of the younger generations. How can we say we believe in young people if we don't give them a healthy space to build their future?" the Pope asked.
(Unioneonline/vl)