Are a lot of young people “afraid” of the bishop because he embodies for them the hierarchy and power of the Church? So it would seem, according to the accounts of several young people who were able to express their own difficulties directly to the bishops, in the various language groups, at the 10th Symposium of European bishops, held in Rome from 24 to 28 April on the theme: “Youth of Europe in the process of change. Laboratory of the faith”. In the French-language group Lydia Obolensky-D’Aloisio, a young Orthodox, explained that those in her own age group “of all confessions are afraid of approaching the bishops because they identify them with power and authority. That’s why it’s so important she said to make the image of the bishop correspond with that of Christ”. Lydia expressed her enthusiasm for having had the possibility, for the first time, of speaking openly with the bishops: “We have an extreme need for your support and to know that you are on our side”. Another of the young delegates at the symposium, Cemil Zenginel from Turkey, said that for his contemporaries “the bishop is a bit remote”: “I’m not afraid of the bishop, but I certainly wouldn’t go to confess to him, I would prefer a priest whom I regard as a friend and with whom I share many things”. Someone complained that the bishops “don’t have time for the young”, and that their homilies are “sometimes too long and boring”. But episodes showing just the opposite are not lacking either: the bishops of Bordeaux and Arras said that, during confirmations, many young people confide their personal problems and sufferings to them. And Sister Fulvie Debatty, a Belgian nun, recalled that when her bishop paid a visit to the community in which she lives together with a group of young people: “A girl, on joining us at tea, exclaimed with some astonishment: ‘Why, he’s a man just like any other!”.
