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Pope Francis’ address to the “Toniolo Young Professional Association”
Clementine Hall – Friday, 12 January 2024
Dear brothers and sisters,
The collaboration of the Toniolo Institute with the Dicasteries of the Curia and the Pontifical Representations engaged with the United Nations is in its tenth year, and is very precious.
Thank you, then, for your service and your effort, and thank you to all those who promote it and support it; I know that recently the Arvedi Foundation has participated in this project of fundamental importance, enabling the number of scholarships to be increased.
It is good that each one of you can have the experience of contact with the Petrine ministry through work with the international institutions, and developing an experience of lived faith, of Christian life that confronts the current challenges of the world.
But your presence does a great deal of good also to our institutions, to which you bring a breath of fresh air, the capacity to dream, the desire to look far ahead.
Today, on the other hand, what some call “short-term thinking” seems to be spreading. It involves thinking made up of a few characters, which burns out quickly. It is thinking that does not look upwards and ahead, but only here and now – the fruit of the needs of the moment. It is thinking that does not look back to history, that does not contain a historical legacy. It is thinking that moves by instinct and is measured in instants; which, made up of emotions and compressed into few words, seems to substitute the already “weak” thought of post-modernism.
And this is the drama of post-modernism: weak thought.
Faced with the complexity of life and the world, this “short-term” thinking leads us to generalize and criticizing. simplifying and rigging reality, in the pursuit of one’s own immediate interests rather than the good of others and of the future of all.
I am concerned when I hear about young people barricaded behind a screen, their eyes reflecting artificial lights instead of letting their creativity shine.
Yes, because to be young is not to think you hold the world in your hand, but to get your hands dirty for the world; it is having before you a life to spend, not to conserve or archive.
I look to you and I believe that your passion and commitment are an antidote to short-term thinking; because contrary to the temptation to settle for the temporary, you have in mind the cultivation of a high vision, one that looks to the stars, not to the dust.
This is the true outlook of the young. But many of them seem, if you will forgive the expression, “squeezed out”: made the object of ever more demanding performances, they risk seeing the juice of life dry up. that restless dream that demands to be released from their hearts.
Restless dreaming … I ask you, but do not answer aloud: do you dream? Do you have restlessness in your mind, in your heart? Are you restless or are you already “young pensioners”? Do not forget: dream restlessly.
It is sad to see young people passive and anaesthetized, lying on their sofas instead of being active in schools and on the streets, being bent over their screens, instead of reading a book or helping a brother in need. It is sad. Young people who are outwardly professionals but inwardly dull, who, exhausted by duty, take refuge in the pursuit of pleasure.
We all need the creativity and zeal that only you, young people, can give us: creativity and zeal are in your hands, your thirst for truth, your cry of peace, your intuition about the future – we need these things! – and your hopeful smiles.
I would like to say to you: take this with you where you work, put yourselves fearlessly on the line.
Because young people are the levers that renew systems, not the cogs that must keep them turning.
So, do not withhold the good that you are, do not be afraid of taking risks.
Please, risk, risk, if you do not take risks, who will?
Take risks, because it is by giving yourselves that you will discover you are gifts, unique and precious gifts.
In the Western context we live surrounded by gifts and presents, by many, often useless, things, immersed in man-made products that make us lose our wonder at the beauty that surrounds us.
Think for a moment: have I lost the capacity for wonder?
Wonder… when a young person loses the capacity for wondering, he or she is already a retiree, a pensioner.
Creation, on the other hand, invites us to become creators of harmony and beauty; to break from the addition of the virtual, to break from the hypnotic word of social media that numbs the soul, and to offer something new and beautiful to others.
A quest that fascinates you, a prayer that comes from the heart, an inquiry that moves you, a page to give to others, a dream to be realized, a gesture of love for those who cannot reciprocate…
This is creating, assimilating the style with which God created the world, the style of gratuitousness, the style of gratuitousness, which brings you out of the logic of “I do in order to have” and “I work in order to earn”.
Creative means to open glimpses of newness in a world that is content with profits.
In this way you will be revolutionaries.
Life asks to be given, not administered. Life is for giving.
The witness of Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, who drew the beauty of living from faith and fearlessly confronted the problems of his time to give the economy a human face, can help you in this.
It is good that you too allow yourselves to be challenged by reality, to rediscover and rethink faith in order to draw inestimable riches for a better future.
I would like to crystallize these ideas around one urgent theme, the theme of peace.
Looking at the world today, the pursuit of the good, the pursuit of harmony, the pursuit of peaceful coexistence among peoples, for which diplomatic activity has always been a vehicle, seems distant.
And yet so much diplomacy seems to have forgotten its nature means of bridging the ever-widening gap in relations between nations.
We see it chasing after events without that preventive force, that dreaming-dialogue-risking for peace which limits the recourse to weapons.
And wars are thus the fruit of prolonged relations of violence, without a precise beginning and without a certain end. But where are the bold ventures, the daring visions?
And where can they come from, if not from young and fearless hearts that welcome the good in themselves and grasp the Gospel as it is, in order to write new pages of fraternity and hope?
How many other areas, such as the economy, the fight against hunger, the production and trade of arms, the climate issue, communications, the world of work, and many others, are in need of renewal and creativity?
I entrust to you these dreams of an elderly man who is pleased to see your young faces; and I think how much more pleased he is to see there Jesus, who always has a young heart and who has called young people to follow him.
In him I renew my gratitude for your service and I bless you. And I ask you to pray for me every day.
In Him I renew my thanks for your service and bless you. And I ask you, please, to pray for me every day.
