The Pope at the Congress of Religious Education: in crises, the heart is revealed

Mireia Bonilla – Vatican City

“What is the relevance, in this context, of the call of this Congress: proclaim the promise! We must announce and remember that we have God’s promise and that God always keeps his promises ”. The Pontiff said so through a video message that was published during the opening ceremony of the 2021 Religious Education Congress organized by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from February 18 to 21, on the occasion of its 65th and 50th anniversary of “Youth Day”. In the video message, delivered in Spanish, the Pope also asks to be reminded that “every woman, every man and every generation has in itself a promise which can release new relational, intellectual, cultural and spiritual energies”.

He also referred to this period of pandemic, assuring that “it has deeply marked the lives of people and the history of our communities”. This is why – he says – “faced with this and other realities, it is necessary to build tomorrow and for that, we need the commitment, strength and dedication of all. It is necessary to act with the style of the Samaritan, which implies letting myself be struck by what I see, knowing that the suffering will change me and with the suffering of the other I must become involved ”. In addition – he points out – the proclamation and fulfillment of God’s promise has been seen in the many “testimonies of generous and gratuitous love which we have witnessed during all these months” and which “have left an indelible mark on the conscience and on the social fabric, teaching how proximity, attention, accompaniment and sacrifice are necessary to nourish fraternity ”.

Recalling these testimonies, Francisco asks not to forget a universal principle: “we never get the same out of the crisis, we get better or worse, but we never get the same thing”. And it is precisely in crises that “his heart reveals itself – he says – its solidity, its mercy, its greatness or its littleness”.

At the end of the message, he addressed the young people, to whom he asked that the impulse that they live and share in this Congress of religious education is to dream together and to look towards the future: “The dreams are built together. Let us dream as a single humanity, like walkers of the same human flesh, like children of this same land which shelters us all, each with the richness of his faith or his convictions, each with his own voice, but yes, all brothers and sisters ”. Moreover, he invited them “to hope” and to be “the poets of a new human beauty, of a new fraternal and friendly beauty”.