20 April 1986
Rome, Italy

When Sister Maddalena Graziuso wrote to me over a month ago, asking me to speak to you this morning, she suggested the following topic, I quote her: "The task of youth in the Church, in Italy and in the other nations known to you; in what areas are the contributions of youth more urgent today."

St. Vincent recommends the virtue of simplicity very strongly to all of us who are part of the Vincentian family. Let me say with all simplicity that I feel inadequate to speak authentically on this subject. To begin with, I am no longer young! It is a little consolation to know that I was born in the same year as the present Queen of England and, if I am not mistaken, she celebrates her sixtieth birthday today. I am not quite as old as she is, for she was born in April and I was born in July, and that is another small consolation. Seriously, however, as we get older, we tend to feel that there is a big gap between us and the young and that for reasons of security, it is better not to risk trying to cross the gap. Hence comes the temptation not to risk talking to young people. There is a natural tendency to want to remain with one's own age group and leave the young on their own. That is a mistake, for the young have much to tell the old about the new world that is emerging and the old have much to tell the young about values that will never change, however much the scenery and society of life may change. When we discuss the question of what should be done for youth in the Church today, we tend sometimes to make a too rigid division of the tasks. At one moment we will concentrate on what adults should be doing for the evangelization of young people and at the next moment we will be emphasizing what youth should be doing for each other in the work of evangelization. We must not be forget that these two sets of activities are not opposed, but rather they must go together. Adults and young need to learn much more how to give and receive at the same time. It was the present Holy Father who said during his visit to England some years ago that "new expressions of wisdom and truth can be fashioned from the meeting of experience and inquiry." Adults have experience. Youth vibrate with inquiry. It is important that youth meet adult, that experience meet inquiry.

If youth is to listen to age and age to youth, there must be a climate of confidence. That is where we fail more often than we realize. We, and by we I mean young and old, enter into dialogue with each other. Too often we have a hidden intention of making our particular point of view prevail. Without realizing it, we have not sufficient confidence in each other. Age thinks youth will ruin everything and youth tends to think that age does not know the new world that is emerging. What is vitally important is to have confidence that each one, be he old or young, has not only his own particular vision of the Church and of the world, but that it merits serious consideration. Without such a climate of confidence it will be difficult for youth to make its contribution to the life of the Church and for age to find a place for that contribution.

What I have been saying so far could be interpreted as a reflection on the first topic that was assigned to me: "The task of youth in the Church." But you ask me to comment more. You ask me to speak about the task of the young in the Church of Italy and of the other countries that I know. To this invitation I must reply by saying that you have manifested excessive confidence in my age and in my experience. I cannot claim to know the Church in Italy profoundly, nor in the other nations which in the past six years I have had the joy and experience of visiting. Here in Italy, as in other countries, I have met small groups of Marian and Vincentian Youth who impressed me with their enthusiasm for working together to convince their own age group and older people of the values of the Gospel. I might mention Spain as a country where Marian Vincentian Youth Movement is sizeable in number and cohesive in its structure. What grows in Spain may not flourish in Italy. However, the Movement, in my opinion, merits study and reflection.

The second topic which you have asked me to comment upon is: "in what areas are the contributions of youth more urgent today." When I visit schools or educational institutes today, I often find classrooms with twenty-five or thirty computers where students are trained how to use them. For many of us older people this branch of modern science was unimaginable forty years ago. The world of the computer is a normal world for the young. It is one of many worlds a young person lives in today. Another world, a more painful one, is the world of unemployment. Many young people face the prospect of unemployment for life. All these worlds are the worlds a young person enters. It is into these worlds that the young must bring the Gospel. It is the young who will have to learn how to prevent technology from becoming the master of humanity, rather than the servant of human values.