“I always tend to regard the youth world with fondness and hope. I think there are innate values and an enormous potential to be developed in all the young”, said the Right Rev. Josep Àngel Saíz Meneses, Bishop of Terrassa, in a conversation with SIR . Bishop Meneses heads the Youth Department of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference. He was speaking in the run-up to the youth meeting to be held in Javier (www.jovenesjavier2006.org) in Navarre, from 4 to 6 August. “Go into all the world” is the slogan of the rally, which is inspired by the life and work of St. Francis Xavier, Jesuit and patron of youth and missions. It is not by chance that the meeting is being held in the Saint’s birthplace. The meeting is intended to respond to Benedict XVI’s appeal to youth at Cologne last year to “follow the example of the revolutionary saints of society”. Francis Xavier was “a missionary in many countries, from Brazil to Japan and finally in Indonesia – continued Msgr. Saíz Meneses -; I ask the Lord to grant us the capacity to imitate his love for God and his ability to adjust to different persons and situations, so that youth may become, like him, young saints”. According to the statistics, “only 10% of Spanish youth declare themselves practising Catholics, 39% say they are non-practising Catholics, 18% indifferent, 28% atheist or agnostic and 2% profess another religion”, observes the bishop, who says he is nonetheless “confident” about the data that emerged from the recent survey “Spanish Youth 2005”. “The fact that 49% of youth declare themselves Catholic does not seem to me negative – he says – especially considering the world we live in, characterised by a growing process of secularisation and by political and social changes of decidedly secular stamp”. In the bishop’s view, we need to start out with realism from the objective situation “to think how it ought to be, and it is from this situation that the pastoral service of the Church should take its cue; it is not a question of concealing the reality, but of working seriously for the future”.
