Some 80% of Italian youth declare that they believe in God, but “as a private matter that is not translated into religious practice”. In Italy, many youngsters feel that the Church is “remote”; that’s why there’s a need “for a Christian community less sociological and more one of faith and prayer: a community that is welcoming, demanding, open to dialogue, disinterested, anxious to relate to the young and willing to be involved in a relation of authentic reciprocity”, in the conviction that “the proposal of the Christian truth is not alternative to the common cause or to the promotion of a deep and free conscience”. The young need to be taught a faith that is “less routine, less taken for granted”, and that is communicated “through an involving initiation that takes account of the link with their real experience and their deepest yearnings”: that is the hope expressed by the Italian bishops for their communities in which the young should be helped to “form a critical conscience” also towards the “huge world of the virtual”; they must be helped to live together with the modern technologies “without passively succumbing or adapting to them but without a priori rejecting or demonizing them”. Apart from experiences like the World Youth Days, the young should be proposed initiatives like “schools of the Word”, “targeted” eucharistic celebrations, education in prayer and experiences at the service of poverty throughout the world. Above all, the parishes ought to “offer a network of relations, provide opportunities for meetings and dialogue, and make available formative communities and environments in which the young feel themselves accepted because they are young”. In the view of the Italian bishops, moreover, the places frequented by young people need to be “inhabited”, they need to be filled with “formative presences to succour the victims of life, of nightlife, of youthful excess, and to be a concrete sign that the Church has each young person at heart”.
