WYD3 - abbey

10. Pope hears confessions of young people

On day five of his apostolic journey to Brazil for World Youth Day, Pope Francis was driven to Rio de Janeiro’s Quinta da Boa Vista park, which also houses the city’s zoo and National Museum of Natural History, to hear the confessions of a group of young people. The park, whose name literally means “farm or park of the beautiful panorama” was once owned by the Jesuits (XVI-XVII c.) before the Company of Jesus was expelled from colonial Brazil.

World Youth Day organizers had set up a massive area in the park with individual, white confessionals so that young people from every nationality can privately receive the sacrament of reconciliation from a priest speaking their own languages. Pope Francis heard the confessions of five young people, speaking Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.





11. Pope points to vital role of grandparents in passing on faith

The vital role of grandparents in passing on the faith through their families: echoing a theme that he spoke of during the flight over to Brazil, Pope Francis on Friday July 26, stressed the essential dialogue between the youngest and oldest members of society.
Speaking at the recitation of the Angelus prayer to crowds gathered outside the Archdiocesan house in Rio de Janeiro, the Pope noted that the Church today marks the feast of Jesus’ grandparents, Saints Joachim and Anne, father and mother of the Virgin Mary. As she grew up with them, the Pope said, she was surrounded by their love and faith, learning to listen to the Lord and to follow his will. Saints Joachim and Anne, the Pope said, were part of a long chain of people who had transmitted their love for God down to Mary, who received the Son of God in her womb and gave him to the world, to us.
How precious is the family as the privileged place for transmitting the faith, the Pope stressed, noting that Grandparents Day is also being celebrated in countries around the world. The Aparecida Document, he recalled, underlines the vital link between children and the elderly who build the future of society together: children, because they lead history forward, the elderly, because they transmit the experience and wisdom of their lives.
How important it is, Pope Francis exclaimed, in the context of this World Youth Day to acknowledge and honour grandparents, and to have intergenerational dialogue, especially within the context of the family.







12. Indian youth recounts 'great' WYD lunch with Pope


Thomson Philip, a young India-born man who lives in New Zealand, can hardly believe he sat next to Pope Francis for lunch during World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro.
The 27 year-old communications engineer told CNA, “I don’t have enough words to describe what I feel. I felt so blessed and it was the best experience of my life. I have a lot of responsibility now with this.”
During the Friday lunch, Pope Francis sat at one of the tables, while Archbishop Orani Tempesta of Rio sat at the other.  On both sides sat seven young people. Philip sat in the first spot on the Pope’s left. “It was a great opportunity in which the Pope asked us to spread the hope of Christ to others. He also asked us to pray for him,” he said. “We didn’t care about the food, just about him.”
A papal lunch with young people from the worlds’ continents has become a World Youth Day tradition. Philip said he reacted with disbelief to the news he would be one of the select few to have a personal lunch with the Pope.
“I got an email message and I checked to see if it was real, if it came from the right place, from the right source. I was so surprised and I almost fainted. It was a great lunch.” He said the young people waited for about an hour before lunch. When Pope Francis arrived, he gave them “a warm welcome.”

“When I told him that I spoke English he asked me to talk slow that he could understand. Fortunately he understood me even though we had a girl there to translate. The Pope asked us to pray and to work in community. He didn’t ask us to do big things, just to do what we are supposed to do well,” he explained.
Philip showed the gifts that each of the Pope’s young lunch companions received: a blessed rosary and a pontifical medal with the bust of the Holy Father. Another youth who attended the lunch, Luis Edmundo Martinez of Mexico, told CNA that eating with the Pope “was a wonderful experience, sharing so much time with him, being with him, and having the freedom to ask him whatever we wanted.”
Martinez was able to speak naturally with the Holy Father in their shared native language of Spanish. “I have been working with the World Youth Day organizational committee since January.  I think that this was in some way a gift from God for serving,” he added.
“I left everything to come here.”

13. Via Crucis: Pope Francis interprets the Cross in daily life

Pope Francis, returned to Copacabana beach on Friday July 27, evening to preside at at the Via Crucis or "Way of the Cross".The commemoration forms a vital part of the World Youth Day events and tens of thousands of people turned out to watch and greet Pope Francis. Our Correspondent Seàn Patrick Lovett followed the event and sent this report.

For me it was the music that made it emotional – and not simply spectacular (which, of course, it was). The Via Crucis has become both a central and much anticipated event in the WYD celebrations and an artistic tour de force in its own right.
My personal favourite is the one I saw in Sydney in 2008. It was an itinerant Way of the Cross that involved the entire city , with the 14 Stations animating the bay and harbour area (on land and water) and culminating on the steps of the iconic Sydney Opera House. My least favourite is the one I remember seeing in Denver in 1993. The role of Jesus was played by a girl…

Here in Rio, Jesus was interpreted by different actors and in a contemporary style. The overall effect was meant to provoke an artistic dialogue between traditional popular religious symbolism and the needs, concerns and expectations of youth. Each of the Stations that punctuated the long stretch of Copacabana beach, drew attention to different existential questions posed by young people today: from love and loneliness to motherhood and mission, from suffering and student-life to disability and death. The 10th Station (“Jesus is stripped of his garments”) was dedicated to social networks and the need to focus on the centrality of the human person without losing oneself in the labyrinth of the webThe World Youth Day Cross was the true protagonist of the evening – carried by 30 young people, representing the different stops the Cross has made on its way from Rome to Rio, and accompanied by 200 others waving the flags of the countries present here at WYD in Brazil. However visually impressive, the overall presentation never lost its religious and liturgical solemnity: incense-bearing altar-servers and a white-garbed guard of honour provided a constant reminder that what was really happening had more to do with spiritual experience than with external theatricality.
And what more appropriate place to be living such an experience than right here in Rio, Brazil – the country that was originally named “The Land of the Holy Cross”?

Pope Francis prayed the Via crucis with pilgrims and nearly 300 artists and volunteers from several countries animated the popular devotion. The meditations accompanying each of the 14 stations depicting the principal episodes of Christ’s Passion, death and burial focused on a theme of particular significance in the life of contemporary youth, including: mission, conversion, community, and vocation; others involved pressing social challenges and existential issues such as suffering, illness and mortality. The texts of the meditations were prepared by a pair of Brazilian priests, Fr. José Zezinho and Fr. João Joãozinho, both of whom are well known in their native country for their work with young people.
In remarks to the pilgrims, Pope Francis spoke of the Cross of Christ as the source of hope, to which anyone and everyone can and ought to bring his deepest joys, sufferings and failures. The Holy Father also spoke of Christ’s Cross as a challenge to all of us: an invitation to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, as well as a lesson and a reminder to us always to look upon others with mercy and tenderness – especially the suffering, and those we meet who are in distress and need help, whether in the form of a word of encouragement, or a concrete action that could take us beyond ourselves.

Please find the full text of Pope Francis’ address, below:

Dear Young Friends,
We have come here today to accompany Jesus on his journey of sorrow and love, the Way of the Cross, which is one of the most intense moments of World Youth Day. At the end of the Holy Year of Redemption, Blessed John Paul II chose to entrust the Cross to you, young people, asking you “to carry it throughout the world as a symbol of Christ’s love for humanity, and announce to everyone that only in the death and resurrection of Christ can we find salvation and redemption” (Address to Young People, 22 April 1984). Since then, the World Youth Day Cross has travelled to every continent and through a variety of human situations. It is, as it were, almost “steeped” in the life experiences of the countless young people who have seen it and carried it. No one can approach and touch the Cross of Jesus without leaving something of himself or herself there, and without bringing something of the Cross of Jesus into his or her own life. I have three questions that I hope will echo in your hearts this evening as you walk beside Jesus: What have you left on the Cross, dear young people of Brazil, during these two years that it has been crisscrossing your great country? What has the Cross of Jesus left for you, in each one of you? Finally, what does this Cross teach us?

1. According to an ancient Roman tradition, while fleeing the city during the persecutions of Nero, Saint Peter saw Jesus who was travelling in the opposite direction, that is, toward the city, and asked him in amazement: “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus’ response was: “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” At that moment, Peter understood that he had to follow the Lord with courage, to the very end. But he also realized that he would never be alone on the journey; Jesus, who had loved him even unto death on the Cross, would always be with him. Jesus, with his Cross, walks with us and takes upon himself our fears, our problems, and our sufferings, even those which are deepest and most painful. With the Cross, Jesus unites himself to the silence of the victims of violence, those who can no longer cry out, especially the innocent and the defenceless; with the Cross, he is united to families in trouble, those who mourn the loss of their children, or who suffer when they see them fall victim to false paradises, such as that offered by drugs. On the Cross, Jesus is united with every person who suffers from hunger in a world where tons of food are thrown out each day; on the Cross, Jesus is united with those who are persecuted for their religion, for their beliefs or simply for the colour of their skin; on the Cross, Jesus is united with so many young people who have lost faith in political institutions, because they see in them only selfishness and corruption; he unites himself with those young people who have lost faith in the Church, or even in God because of the counter-witness of Christians and ministers of the Gospel. The Cross of Christ bears the suffering and the sin of mankind, including our own. Jesus accepts all this with open arms, bearing on his shoulders our crosses and saying to us: “Have courage! You do not carry your cross alone! I carry it with you. I have overcome death and I have come to give you hope, to give you life” (cf. Jn 3:16).

2. And so we can answer the second question: What has the Cross given to those who have gazed upon it or touched it? What has it left in each one of us? It gives us a treasure that no one else can give: the certainty of the unshakable love which God has for us. A love so great that it enters into our sin and forgives it, enters into our suffering and gives us the strength to bear it. It is a love which enters into death to conquer it and to save us. The Cross of Christ contains all the love of God, his immeasurable mercy. This is a love in which we can place all our trust, in which we can believe. Dear young people, let us entrust ourselves to Jesus, let us give ourselves over entirely to him (cf. Lumen Fidei, 16)! Only in Christ crucified and risen can we find salvation and redemption. With him, evil, suffering, and death do not have the last word, because he gives us hope and life: he has transformed the Cross from an instrument of hate, defeat and death into a sign of love, victory and life.

The first name given to Brazil was “The Land of the Holy Cross”. The Cross of Christ was planted five centuries ago not only on the shores of this country, but also in the history, the hearts and the lives of the people of Brazil and elsewhere. The suffering Christ is keenly felt here, as one of us who shares our journey even to the end. There is no cross, big or small, in our life which the Lord does not share with us.

3. But the Cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to always look upon others with mercy and tenderness, especially those who suffer, who are in need of help, who need a word or a concrete action which requires us to step outside ourselves to meet them and to extend a hand to them. How many people were with Jesus on the way to Calvary: Pilate, Simon of Cyrene, Mary, the women… Sometimes we can be like Pilate, who did not have the courage to go against the tide to save Jesus’ life, and instead washed his hands. Dear friends, the Cross of Christ teaches us to be like Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus to carry that heavy wood; it teaches us to be like Mary and the other women, who were not afraid to accompany Jesus all the way to the end, with love and tenderness. And you? Who are you like? Like Pilate? Like Simon? Like Mary?
Dear friends, let us bring to Christ’s Cross our joys, our sufferings and our failures. There we will find a Heart that is open to us and understands us, forgives us, loves us and calls us to bear this love in our lives, to love each person, each brother and sister, with the same love. Amen!

14. Pope speaks of God’s call to proclaim the Gospel with a culture of encounter
Pope Francis on Saturday July 27, urged the bishops, clergy, seminarians and religious to respond to the call of God, proclaim the Gospel and promote a culture of encounter in their lives and ministry. In his homily at mass Saturday at Rio de Janeiro’s Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, the Pope reflected upon three aspects of the priestly or religious vocation.

Elaborating the ‘call by God’ he said “that our “life in Christ” is precisely what ensures the effectiveness of our apostolate, that which makes our service fruitful, which can be achieved through our faithfulness to a life of prayer, and in our daily encounter with him, present in the Eucharist and in those most in need. “Being with” Christ does not isolate us from others. Rather, it is a “being with” in order to go forth and encounter others.” He said. Recalling the words of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he said “We must be very proud of our vocation because it gives us the opportunity to serve Christ in the poor.
Further he said “we are called to proclaim the Gospel.” Asking the bishops, priests and religious, to accompany the youth in hearing the mandate of Jesus: “Go and make disciples of all nations” he said “It is our responsibility to help kindle within their hearts the desire to be missionary disciples of Jesus. Recalling his personal dream as a young man to be a missionary in faraway Japan, he said “God, however, showed me that my missionary territory was much closer: my own country.”
“To be missionary disciples flows from our baptism and is an essential part of what it means to be a Christian.” He said. We must also help them to realize that we are called first to evangelize in our own homes and our places of study and work, to evangelize our family and friends. He called everyone present to spare no effort in the formation of our young people to be missionaries in everyday life.

Finally he rued that in many places, the culture of exclusion, of rejection, is spreading. There is no place for the elderly or for the unwanted child; there is no time for that poor person on the edge of the street. So he said “have the courage to go against the tide. Let us not reject this gift of God which is the one family of his children. Encountering and welcoming everyone, solidarity and fraternity: these are what make our society truly human, there by promoting the culture of encounter and being servants of communion”
While concluding he said may the Virgin Mary be our model praying that she may be the Star that surely guides our steps to meet the Lord.