“Holy Father, we are a representative group of European youth. We have thought about, written and now deliver to you this message of the Christian youth of Europe. It’s a brief act of commitment that expresses our feelings, both ideal and concrete, as citizens and believers of the European community. We have discussed various challenges that concern our continent: from intercultural dialogue to peace and development, from the family to citizenship, from education to employment. They are questions that personally involve us and that require our intelligence and passion. That’s why we have decided to tackle them and to examine them through the interpretational key of hope, as you indicated in Ecclesia in Europa and as you asked the youth gathered in Loreto to do on the occasion of the “Eur-hope” meeting in 1995. Over the last ten years we have tried to respond to that invitation to “build a Europe of Hope”. Our conscience as European citizens has grown. We have dreamed of a Europe of Hope that we are now really experiencing. In August we were in Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, on the pilgrimage of European youth, and wrote this message… We are now setting out on the road to the WYD in Cologne, in Germany. There we shall share this message with all the youth of the world… Looking at Europe with hope means looking at the whole world with hope, it means responding to Christ’s call with the same enthusiasm as the apostle James: We can do it!”
