In Latin America the young form 50% of the population. They are those “who live to the limit… in a frenzy of speed, rhythm and mysticism”: that’s how they were described by Msgr. Jorge Enrique Jiménes Carvajal, bishop of Zipaquirà in Colombia and president of CELAM, the Conference of the episcopates of Latin America, in his address to the round table on the prospects for youth in Europe and in the other continents, organized as part of the !0th Symposium of European bishops recently held in Rome. They are he said young people “who are critical and indifferent, full of questions and capable of infinite affection, searchers for truth, children of an age that has passed but called to be progenitors of a new world. And the Church has no right to defraud them”. Archbishop Jiménes listed the main problems of youth in Latin America as follows: “lack of opportunities, lack of study, lack of work”, “dramatic increase in the consumption of alcohol and drugs”, “cultural changes that place fundamental values in doubt, privatize their life and reduce the meaning of the common good and public service”. Latin America he explained has given impulse to the youth apostolate through Congresses for the young (in Bolivia in 1991, in Chile in 1998) and through the annual Latin-American Meetings of youth pastoral work, during which experiences are exchanged and new challenges proposed. The primary need in working with the young (also to bring back strayed sheep to the fold) said the president of CELAM is that of “simplifying the language, purifying it of ecclesiastical jargon that makes it difficult or impossible for a more secularized world to understand”. A second priority is that of “creating and reinforcing specific venues and facilities for youth initiatives and doing so in such a way that the young too participate in the decisions”. The whole youth apostolate, moreover, is closely linked to the vocational apostolate, to promote vocations to the priesthood, to the consecrated life and also to public service in its various expressions.
