The finest home

The meeting with Jesus gives “peace and freedom” and helps the young “to guide their choices of life”, writes Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, on behalf of Benedict XVI, in a letter read out on 7 December to the participants in the European Youth Forum (www.giovaniloreto.it). The event was held as part of the celebrations marking the tenth anniversary of the John Paul II Centre at Loreto and with the participation of some 120 young delegates from a score of European countries, selected by their national Bishops’ Conferences. “To travel this road – says the letter – you need to have an open mind, be willing to enter into dialogue with others, and be ready to place yourself in discussion and to dialogue with intellectual honesty and with a clear conscience, recognizing that mutual exchange always represents a real opportunity for growth. Through these meetings, many young people have made a journey of human and relational maturation; they have achieved greater self-knowledge and also a heightened consciousness of the presence of the Lord Jesus in their life”. Home/Church, desire and fear. The first two addresses at the meeting in Loreto were given by Mgr. Domenico Sigalini, Bishop of Palestrina, general assistant of Italian Catholic action and chairman of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) Commission for the Laity, and Mgr. Giancarlo Bregantini, Archbishop of Campobasso and chairman of the CEI Commission for the Pastoral Care of Work. “The desire for a home”, said the former, is, for youth, the “desire for a full life”. But what is home? In the experience of everybody “it is the body of the mother, the first place of acceptance, peace and serenity”. Home is, in the second place, and chiefly, “the family”. Then comes the “dream of building a new home”. Lastly “the yearning is born for an even finer home”, the “definitive” home that “is Jesus”. Archbishop Bregantini urged the young to “build your life in the Church and with the Church”, which is the “house of God”. “It’s easy to say ‘Christ yes, Church no’ as became the slogan in the student protests in 1968”, said Mgr. Bregantini, who recalled: “I too was wholly bent on a direct meeting with Christ. But if I met him it was through the Church, however imperfect and limited she may be” “The Church – he continued – accepts us in our fragility, in our rawness, it accepts us as sinners. But, placed the one next to the other, on the same foundation that is Christ, those bricks, in other words our hearts, become objects of beauty and luminosity”. The prayer that “changed us”. Some particular experiences emerged from the workshops, such as the ecumenical and interfaith experience of Annette Hansen, a 29-year-old girl from Ringsted, in Denmark. “Every three months – she explained – we hold a meeting of prayer and Eucharistic Adoration called ‘Lux mundi’. Catholics, Protestants, even Muslims come to it, their curiosity whetted by this moment of spirituality. Atheist youth also come: it is a common initiative of all the dioceses – for Catholics in my country are few, only some 35,000, out of a total population of 8 million – and yet it is one that has changed us all”. Annette’s life story is particularly linked to Loreto, “where I came for the first time seven years ago, urged by my mother, who is Protestant: I did not believe, but in the Santa Casa – the house of the Virgin from Nazareth – I felt a very strong emotion, which later inspired me to undertake a journey of conversion. Now, together with a consecrated lay sister, we are about to open our own home to provide hospitality to young people”. By contrast, the 21-year-old Marta Grkovic, from Zagreb, in Croatia, comes from a country of which 88% of the population is Catholic. After WYD in Cologne and Sydney and the pilgrimage of hope of the Taizé Community to Zagreb three years ago, Marta said she “felt an impulse inside her, something that said to me I should give more of myself”. So, “given that the majority in my country are Catholics but many young people are non-practising, we formed the idea of establishing a kind of coordination, at the national level, between all the diocesan youth pastoral services, in order to work more effectively and productively together”. On the horizon is World Youth Day in Madrid, for which Marta is making an effort at the parish and diocesan level, organizing concerts, workshops in Advent and even a dancing course as fund-raising events: “We are trying to raise money for the journey – she explains – because everyone wants to come, but many cannot afford to do so”.The programme. The meeting in Loreto opened with welcoming addresses by Father Eric Jacquinet, head of the youth section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Father Ferenc Janka, assistant general secretary of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, and Father Nicolò Anselmi, head of the CEI national service for youth apostolate. The young participants were welcomed in the Basilica of Loreto by Archbishop Giovanni Tonucci. Later, for the solemnity of the Blessed Virgin of Loreto they met Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopate.