by Michela Nicolais, sir

The youth document delivered to Pope Francis

The card. Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, presented to the press the document with which the pre-Synod concluded, in which 300 young people participated in the Vatican and 15 thousand through social media. Opening the proceedings last Monday, the Pope spoke with the protagonists of the initiative for three and a half hours. He will receive the document, which will constitute an integral part of the Instrumentum laboris of the October Synod, from the hands of a young man from Panama.

“A broad document”, “a shared text” drawn up with “a fully synodal method”: thus card. Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, defined the document with which the pre-Synod of young people concluded, presented today in the Press Office of the Holy See. The text, unanimously approved by the 300 young people from every continent who participated in the work in the Vatican - opened last Monday by the Pope, who spent three and a half hours with the young people - is one of the sources that will contribute to the drafting of the Instrumentum laboris for the October Synod, together with the summaries sent by the Episcopal Conferences and the Synods of the Eastern Catholic Churches, the results of the online questionnaire proposed to young people and the interventions of the international seminar on the youth situation organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod last September. There are three parts of the document, preceded by an introduction: “Challenges and opportunities for young people in today's world; faith and vocation, discernment and accompaniment; educational and pastoral action of the Church". The cardinal announced that the text will be delivered to Francis by a young man from Panama, the nation that will host the next World Youth Day in 2019. 15.300 young people participated in the pre-Synod, among those present in the Vatican these days and those connected via social media from all over the world.

The young Church. “The young people, who speak in the first person plural, call themselves 'the young Church'”, the young Church:

“There is a Church of young people, which is not 'opposite' or 'in opposition' to a Church of adults, but 'inside' the Church like leaven in the dough, to use an evangelical image”.

It is the photograph taken by card. Baldisseri, according to whom the text "emerges a great desire for transparency and credibility on the part of the members of the Church, in particular the pastors: young people expect a Church that knows how to humbly recognize the errors of the past and present and commit itself with courage to live what he professes." At the same time, "young people are looking for educators with a human face, ready if necessary to recognize their fragilities". Other fundamental categories of the document are “vocation, discernment and accompaniment”. “Young people – commented Baldisseri – suffer today from the lack of true companions who can help them find their way in life, and ask the Christian community to take care of their need for authoritative guides”. Ultimately, the cardinal summarized, "young people are calling for an 'extroverted' Church, committed to dialogue without preclusions with advancing modernity, in particular with the world of new technologies, whose potential must be recognized and the correct use oriented" .

Vices and virtues of the digital world. And a paragraph of the document is dedicated to the vices and virtues of the digital world, in which it defines the world of social media as "an important part" of young people's identity but warns against their "reckless use", which can produce isolation , laziness, desolation, boredom. “Online relationships can become inhumane”, with short-term risks such as pornography and long-term risks such as the “loss of memory, culture and creativity”, in a world dominated by the logic of appearance. Other challenges to meet are those linked to the field of bioethics and those posed by artificial intelligence, which puts employment opportunities for many workers at risk.

Family and social exclusion. “Traditional family models are in decline in various places,” and “this brings with it suffering, even among young people.” It is one of the themes covered in the first part of the document, which also stigmatizes social exclusion as a "factor that contributes to the loss of self-esteem and identity experienced by many", in the Middle East, in Europe as well as for migrants.

The sacred, the parishes and racism. “Sometimes parishes are no longer meeting places”, the analysis of the young people, who note that for many of them “religion is now considered a private matter”, also because “many times the Church appears too severe and it is often associated with excessive moralism." Young people, in particular, are deeply involved and interested in topics such as sexuality and addictions and in major social problems, such as organized crime and human trafficking, violence, corruption, exploitation, femicide, every form of persecution and degradation of the natural environment. Among the fears, social, political and economic instability. There is no shortage of accents of "mea culpa", as with racism at different levels which also finds fertile ground in the world of youth.

Mistakes and scandals. “The scandals attributed to the Church – both the real ones and those only perceived as such – affect the trust of young people in the Church and in the traditional institutions that it represents”, point out the young people, who among the “mistakes” of the Church cite “the various cases of sexual abuse and mismanagement of wealth and power." Among the problems that afflict society is the lack of equality between men and women, which is also widespread in the Church.

As for the thorniest issues relating to sexual morality, young people admit that "there is often great disagreement" among them on particularly debated topics, such as contraception, abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, marriage and also on "how the priesthood is perceived in different reality of the Church".