Video message
“The Church is a home, your home”. This is how Pope Francis greeted the Vietnamese youth in a video message addressed to them on the occasion of the Youth Day celebrated in Vietnam’s northern dioceses. “You have been lucky to be born from the womb of a heroic Church, rich in luminous witnesses”, Pope Francis said: “I am thinking of the holy Vietnamese martyrs. I think of your grandparents and parents who suffered as a result of the war, losing almost everything except their faith, which they passed on to you as their most precious legacy. Behold, in this home of the Church you can always return to draw strength and inspiration for your faith; here you can always form your conscience in dignity; here each of you can find the way of life according to God’s calling”. “We must not forget that yours is a Church born of generous and enthusiastic missionaries”, Pope Francis underlined, citing the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes, who said “Catholics are those who love one another. It is the religion of Love”. “May these models of your first Christians guide you; and may gratitude to them always be a source of missionary enthusiasm for you”, the Pontiff exhorted young people, calling on them not to think of “home” as “something closed and limited”. For “every journey given by our Lord is always a missionary journey to ‘tell everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful He has been’”. “Do not forget that you are still a minority among your people”, Pope Francis remarked: “There is still a majority that has the right, and is waiting, to hear the proclamation of the Gospel. Christ’s mandate is therefore still urgent for you today. Now it is up to you to build a young and joyful Church-home, full of life and fraternity”.
