I have obviously been unable to keep up with the flood of stories in the Italian newspapers after the Agora in Loreto, because I have had to try to keep abreast of the Austria stories as well - becaused it all involves translating - and more critically, time, of which I am getting less and less. So I will just post here whatever I can translate when I can.
I found this one from L'Opinione today, which I decided to translate because it sounds like it was written by someone who has never really paid attention to the Pope before and is now discovering in him what those who have followed Joseph Ratzinger - even if only from the time he became Benedict XVI, such as most of us on this Forum - were quick to note. An 'unknown Ratzinger'? By no means! Just the Ratzinger the media never bothered to see and acknowledge.
An unknown Ratzinger
amid young people
di Paolo Merenda
Whoever had doubted whether there would be ample participation in the Agora of Italian youth last weekend has been rudely disappointed. These skeptics maintain that Benedict XVI's style - shy, reserved, not inclined to great crowds - would keep the young people away, even those who belong to church movements and various parochial organizations.
And yet, at least half a million turned up in Loreto, far beyond the 350,000 projected by the organizers and scoffed at by skeptics.
Throughout the night of September 1-2, the plain of Montorso was an immense expanse of lights, a beehive of young people celebrating joyously, after having listened attentively to the Pope earlier in the evening. As they would listen to him again the next day.
The Pope himself listened attentively to some of their stories, allowed himself to get involved in these stories, and showed himself moved, and then he addressed their questions with the strength of a father and of a master of the faith.
The Pope touched on many issues last weekend: from protection of the environment to the family as the unique and indissoluble nucleus for laving a harmonious and ordered life, from the need to change the world to make it 'a place of hope for everyone' and the Church as the place for 'authentic christian experience' rather than 'a center of power."
From what was said on Saturday and Sunday, four fundamental elements emerged, the pillars, as it were, of Ratzinger thinking:
- Jesus Christ - as the way, the truth and the life, the keystone of our joy.
- Love, as a global reality that gives value to the future of humanity.
- The family, as the irreplaceable place for formation and education of the young.
- The Church as a community of faith and an agent of service and charity.
Benedict XVI reminded everyone forcefully and with a transparency of heart, that Christ is the center of the world, and therefore, no one who follows him should feel being dismissed to the margins of this world. Every Christian is the protagonist of his own life, and in the eyes of God, every man is important.
"Let no one among you feel emarginated, no life is unimportant or without sense. You are all important, all leading players, because you are at the center of God's love."
In the light of God's love is how the Pope went on to explain the true sense of Christian love, calling on the youth to reject decisively a 'use-and-throw-away' love which is 'fleeting and deceptive, imprisoned in a selfish and materialistic mentality'.
Instead, he said, choose 'true and profound love' which finds its full expression in matrimony before God. Matrimony and the formation of a Christian family, the Pope said, continue to be indispensable instruments for a harmonious society, despite so many separations and divorces.
He urged them to look at Mary, "she knows well your most noble and profound aspirations. Above all she knows your desire for love, your need to love and be loved...Looking at her, following her example obediently, you will discover the beauty of love."
Finally, the Holy Father reaffirmed the beauty of the Christian community, a place of welcome and sharing, of service and charity, in which young people are given the possibility to grow and develop in a world of values which has its origin and culmination in reciprocal love.
And this means a Church which is not a center of power, but a community of fellow pilgrims, which is responsible for the formation and education of consciences.
In Loreto, we had the joy of seeing a Benedict XVI who was not only close to the young people, but to all mankind, particularly those who find it difficult to welcome God, who have lost the sense of life, who are disoriented and are looking for a reliable horizon to go by.
For this part of mankind, the Holy Father had words of comfort, welcome and life, for this part of mankind, he prayed with half a million young people from Italy and other parts of the world.
In Loreto we saw a previously unknown Pope
[the writer used the word 'inedito' which means 'previously unpublished'] - youthful among the youth, exquisitely sensitive in his smiles and his hugs, a Pope who advocated in a fresh way the need to change the world, to make it more human and ever more conformed to the Creator's plan.