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Illustration: Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
Pope Francis’ address to the Italian National Youth Council
Consistory Hall – Saturday, 16 November 2024
Dear brothers and sisters,
I greet the president and all the members of the Italian National Youth Council.
I am happy to meet you on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of. this body: a milestone that will be an opportunity to continue working with confidence, before the youth disappear.
Hope does not disappoint!
Listen well: hope does not disappoint. Never.
It was with these words that I called for the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025.
I was pleased to read in your “Confidence Index Survey” that hope is the inner attitude with which young Italians Identify most today..
We often meet people who are discouraged because they look at the future with scepticism and pessimism. These people (with the) long face … pessimistic.
So it is therefore important to know that young Italians know how to be artisans of hope because they are capable of dreaming.
Please do not lose the ability to dream: when a young person loses this ability, I am not saying that he becomes old, no, because old people dream. He becomes “retired from life”. That is very bad.
Please, young people, don’t retire from life, and don’t let hope be stolen from you!
Never! Hope never disappoints!
In dialogue with the institutions, you are the consultative body called upon to represent the world of youth at local, national and European level.
To this end, you must promote the active participation of young people by “networking” among the many associations inspired by values such as solidarity and inclusion.
By “networking”, but also by making noise. This is very important.
In this task of “networking” and “making noise” – I invite you to be a voice for everyone, especially for those who do not have a voice.
And today there are so many people who have no voice, so many who are excluded, not only socially, because of the problems of poverty, lack of education, the tyranny of drugs…
but also of those who do not know how to dream.
Network in order to dream, and do not lose this ability. Dream.
As we know – also from the news in these days – the challenges you face are many: the dignity of work, the family, education, citizenship, care for creation and new technologies.
The increase in acts of violence and self-harm, up to the most extreme gesture of taking one’s own life, are signs of a worrying and complex malaise.
You know that, in the world not all the suicides of young people are published, they are hidden.
It is a change of times, a metamorphosis not only cultural but also anthropological.
That is why an educational path that involves everyone is fundamental.
I can say that we need a ‘village of education’ where, in diversity, we share the commitment to create a network of human and open relationships.
We need a pact, an alliance, between those who wwant to put the person at the center and, who, , are willing to invest new energy in the training of those who will serve the community.
You are called to be witnesses to the beauty and newness of life.
There is a beauty that goes beyond appearances: it is the beauty of every man and woman who lives their personal vocation with love, in selfless service to the community, in generous work for the happiness of the family, in unselfish commitment to the growth of social friendship.
To discover, show and highlight this beauty is to lay the foundations of social solidarity and the culture of encounter.
Your selfless service to truth and freedom, to justice and peace, to the family and to politics is the most beautiful and necessary contribution you can make to the institutions for building a new society. And this is not done with ideas, but with human capacities, with all our capacities, without forgetting the extremes of life.
I would like to leave you with two questions: some of you are married, you have children
1. Do you know how to play with your children?
Are you able to “waste” time playing with your children or with your grandchildren?
“Because even if God does not give children, the devil gives grandchildren”.
Are you capable of this ability to play?
And then, another question:
2, Are you able to caress an elderly person?
Playing with children and caressing the elderly.
In our culture today, children are left to grow up alone, without tenderness, and the elderly are sent to rest homes, to die there.
We must change: play with children, and caress the elderly.
And this will make your youth fruitful. Do not forget this: children and the elderly.
Finally, Allow me to say the most important thing to you:
For a Christian, It is a truth that must never be silenced.
It is a proclamation that concerns everyone, young and old, and which we always need to hear again and again: “God loves you, you know”, “God loves you”, “Christ saves you”, “He lives!”.
If He lives, then hope is not in vain. Evil, pessimism, and scepticism will not have the last word.
So many young people fall prey to this scepticism, some are also sustained by drugs.
The beginning of being a Christian is not an ethical choice or a great idea, but the encounter with a person, the encounter with Jesus, who gives life a new horizon.
Hope, the state of mind with which most Italians identify themselves today, is for us Christians a name and a face: the face of the Lord, the face of Jesus.
Do not be afraid of the challenges and the difficulties you may encounter in your work!
Do not be afraid to go through conflicts too. Conflict makes us grow.
But do not forget that conflict is like a labyrinth: You cannot get out of the labyrinth alone:
you get out in the company of someone else who helps you.
First, get out of the labyrinth from above. Second, Let others help you.
And always look up so that life is not a labyrinthine ride that kills youth.
To grow old in a labyrinth is to grow old in superficial values.
It is sad to see a man or a woman, young, living (their) life in superficiality. It is very sad…
In life it is also necessary to go through conflicts.
You need the patience to transform them into the ability to listen, to acknowledge the other, to grow together.
Trying to overcome conflicts is a sign that we have aimed higher, higher than our self-interest, to get out of the quicksand of social enmity.
Continue in your service: seek out, protect and bring the voice and hope of young Italians into institutional spaces, so that together we can work for the common good.
I entrust you to Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. Do you know him?
I heard about him when I was a child, because my father was a companion of Catholic Action.
He was a young man like you, who gave witness to the joy of the Gospel with his life.
I invite you to know him and to imitate his perseverance, his courage and his joy.
I wish you all a good journey, and good work!
Thank you for your visit.
I bless you from my heart, and please do not forget to pray for me. Thank you!
