Pope Francis calls on youth to call on God.
Pope Francis has his own way of calling on the youth to pray more often to gain more strength to combat all sort of evil in the world. He used some social media and technology terms or lingoes in his Homily in the holy mass which was celebrated to end the World Youth Day (WYD) in Poland.
The 79-year-old pontiff reminded the youth that God challenges everyone to be strong enough to fight evil and temptations and choose to love, even the enemies.
“(God) “demands of us real courage, the courage to be more powerful than evil, by loving everyone, even our enemies”, said the Pope in his homily. He also compared evil-doings to “virus infecting and blocking everything”.
Pope Francis also added that the faithful should download all the “links” that can result to positivism and can bring to everyone’s heart a good example. He said that life should not only be through “text” and internet “chats” but instead, it must be a priority to pray.
“Trust the memory of God: his memory is not a hard disk that saves and archives all our data, but a heart filled with tender compassion, one that finds joy in erasing in us every trace of evil,” said the Pope.
Though the Polish authorities refused to disclose the actual number of people who attended the World Youth Day mas, reports say the attendees account to three million pilgrims.
World Youth Day (WYD) is an event for young people organized every three (or sometimes, two) years by the Catholic Church. The next occasion, World Youth Day 2019, will be held in 2019 in Panama. World Youth Day was initiated by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985.
For the first celebration of WYD in 1986, bishops all over the world were invited to schedule an annual youth event to be held every Palm Sunday in their dioceses. It is celebrated at the diocesan level annually, and at the international level every two to three years at different locations. The 1995 World Youth Day closing Mass in the Philippines set a world record for the largest number of people gathered for a single religious event (with 5 million attendees)— a record surpassed when 6 million attended a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in the Philippines 20 years later in 2015.