The archbishop of Évora, the Most Rev. Maurílio Gouveia, has inaugurated the pastoral year 2006-2007 with a letter dedicated to the young: “they will be placed at the centre of the attention of the diocesan community”. The pastoral plan for the next year continues the pastoral action focused on the family that was developed over the last three years. The relations between the two spheres is self-evident: “On the one hand, the family is of decisive importance in the bringing up of children; on the other, the young need to be prepared later to assume their responsibilities in the conjugal field and, more generally, in the life of the church and society”. The letter appeals for the active collaboration of the young themselves, without which the plan would be impossible to realise: “You are the young generation at the beginning of the third millennium […] You already dream of the day on which you will embark on a profession, but above all of the day of your marriage, a decisive step for the formation of the family”. For some “now is also the time to discern the possibility of a life consecrated to God and to man, as priests, religious or also as laypeople inspired by the Gospel”. The objective of the pastoral plan is therefore to “promote a special meeting with Jesus and with the Church founded by Him, in other words, with the people who are his disciples, able to respond to the fears and anxieties, questions and projects that the young bear in their hearts, in the legitimate desire for happiness and personal self-fulfilment”.
