LISBON, Portugal – Hundreds of 1000’s of younger individuals mirrored on their anxieties, enslavement to the “tyranny” of social media and craving to avoid wasting the planet at an enormous outside rally with Pope Francis on Friday.
It took almost an hour for the open car carrying the 86-year-old pope to drive slowly by the group at Lisbon’s Edward VII Park because it was mobbed by individuals participating in a Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) retracing the final hours in Jesus’ life.
The crowd, which police estimated at about 800,000, listened to 14 meditations at every of the “stations of the cross” that have been written by younger individuals reflecting issues reminiscent of battle, mass shootings, home violence, little one abuse, environmental degradation, bullying, cell-phone habit, despair, consuming problems and burnout.
“Selfies after selfies. The tyranny of the right body and the perfect smile. Photos of us on social media in carefully studied poses. Artificial posts waiting for likes,” one of many meditations mentioned.
“We, too, ask ourselves what our future on this planet will be like. We witness the unchecked consumption of the earth’s resources, the extinction of species, and the devastation of forests. We are frightened by climate change and feel very insecure about the future,” mentioned one other.
“All of this is linked to disordered lifestyles that cause some to starve while others get sick from overeating”.
The pope arrived on Wednesday to preside at World Youth Day, a pageant that takes place each two or three years in a distinct metropolis and has been dubbed the Catholic Woodstock.
Scaffold dancing
People carried out trendy dance routines that included dangling from scaffolding above the pope as they moved a big cross round a construction that resembled a building web site.
When the meditation about local weather change was learn, they donned fuel masks as white smoke simulating air air pollution engulfed the scaffolding.
In his brief, improvised deal with to the group at first of the occasion, Francis mentioned, “Loving is always a risk, but worth it”.
Earlier on Friday, the pope visited a Church-run social heart in a low-income Lisbon neighborhood, urging younger individuals to shun “distilled,” orderly lives the place every thing appears excellent, however “get your hands dirty” by serving to the needy.
“Tangible love is that which gets its hands dirty,” he mentioned.
“How many distilled, useless, lives pass through life without leaving a mark because their lives don’t have weight,” he mentioned in an deal with to staff and volunteers on the social heart after a youngsters’s choir sang for him.
There, he mentioned the message he wished to depart younger individuals attending the pageant from world wide was that whereas summary, platonic love exists “in orbit,” tangible love can change the world.
Francis began Friday by listening to the confessions of three younger Catholics, from Spain, Italy and Guatemala, in one of many parks internet hosting the pageant. — Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
