Pope: "young people must feel loved by the Church"

With only 77 days left to go to the beginning of World Youth Day in Cologne this August, young people all over the world are getting ready to make their pilgrimage to Germany. As they make their preparations, the Pope in an address yesterday to Italian Bishops spoke about the need for young people to feel loved by the Church. After acknowledging the expectations he places on World Youth Day in Germany, the Holy Father said that young people are in danger of being tossed about by the waves of every new idea that comes along. "Therefore, they need to be helped to grow and mature in the faith," he said. "This is the first service they must receive from the Church, and especially from us bishops and from our priests." Benedict XVI added that "many of them are unable to understand and accept immediately all the teaching of the Church, but precisely for this reason it is important to awaken in them the intention to believe with the Church, and to have the confidence that this Church, animated and guided by the Spirit, is the true subject of faith, and that entering in it, we enter and participate in the communion of the faith." To achieve this objective, the Pope explained that "young people must feel loved by the Church, loved specifically by us, bishops and priests." "In this way, they will be able to experience in the Church the friendship and love that the Lord has for them," he said. "They will understand that in Christ truth coincides with love, and they will learn in turn to love the Lord and to have confidence in his body, which is the Church." Source: WYD