Bishop Speaks

Pope Francis, in his message to young people, says that “Christ is alive and He wants you to be alive!”, and goes on to affirm: “The Church needs your momentum, your intuitions, your faith”.

This is precisely the focus of our youth ministry. We wish to harness the energy, the enthusiasm, the dreams, the drive and dynamism of our youth for the reform, renewal and rejuvenation of the Church. And, Yuvamitra is our concrete, creative and constructive outreach to our youth.

Therefore, I am really happy to welcome and encourage the innovative and intuitive initiative of Yuvamitra to have a website of its own, because it will greatly facilitate and expand our outreach to our youth.

I know for some young people the Church appears to be boring, a nuisance, an irritant, and a hypocritical institution. What it really means is that the youth want a Church that is humble, honest and holy; which lives, loves and listens; which understands, forgives and encourages; and not one that condemns, coerces and castigates, even if she cannot always accept, approve and appreciate everything, since she has to be true to her call and be faithful to her Lord. The Yuvamitra website will act as a bridge between the Church and the youth.

It has almost become a cliché to say that young people are the future of our world and of our Church. But, as Pope Francis has asserted, they are not only the future, but they are indeed our present, because, even now they are helping to enrich, enhance and empower our lives. That is why they are not satisfied with prepackaged answers and ready-made solutions, to such serious challenges as poverty, discrimination, unemployment, injustice, conflict, war, migration, exploitation, sexuality, and the advantages and adverse consequences of living in a digital world. The Yuvamitra website will be a step forward in addressing these concerns of our young people.

The Yuvamitra website will be a powerful tool of evangelization of our youth by preaching, proclaiming and propagating the three great truths. The first is that “God loves you”, with a love that is more concerned with reconciling than forbidding…with the future than with the past. The second is that “Christ saves you”, forgiving us time and again…bearing us on His shoulders. The third is that “Christ is alive”, a realization that helps us to stop regretting the past, complaining about the present, and instead, to look to the future with hope. This is indeed the mission of the Yuvamitra website.

Youth is the age of choice, and young people should not be afraid to take chances and make mistakes, working for the common good and being “protagonists of change”, and “courageous missionaries of hope”. The Yuvamitra website will educate, enlighten, enthuse, energize and empower our youth through informative, interesting, instructive, and inspiring items and initiatives, by helping the whole Church in this diocese to journey together with the young, moved by the grammar of love, respect and trust, identifying new approaches that are creative and even daring, in the fields of arts, sports, and care for the environment, which are all areas of positive pastoral development.  

In this context, the Yuvamitra website will also help our young people to respond to their vocation, by fostering and developing all that they are, whether in marriage, or in the vocation to special consecration as priests and religious.

Pope Francis tells young people: ‘Dream and live, be free and authentic, be the critical conscience of society.’ The Yuvamitra website will help our youth to respond to this call of the Holy Father.