“In the ocean of history, we sail on a stormy breakwater and the lack of courageous courses of peace is felt.” Francis addresses authorities at the cultural center of Belén, not far from the 16th-century tower that dominates the Tagus River like an image from the age of great discoveries. And he addresses Europe, “heart of the West”, to invoke a change of course: “It is worth asking: where are you heading, if you do not offer paths of peace, creative paths to end the war in Ukraine and the many conflicts that stain the world with blood?
Bergoglio has arrived in Lisbon for World Youth Day (WYD), a million young people await him in the Portuguese capital. “I will return rejuvenated”, he smiled on the plane to the journalists who followed him on the trip until Sunday. And immediately he explained that he hoped that WYD “will be, for the Old Continent, an impulse of universal opening.” “For Europe, for the true Europe, the world needs its role as bridge builder and peacemaker in its eastern part, in the Mediterranean, in Africa and in the Middle East.”
Only in this way “Europe will be able to contribute, on the international stage, its specific originality, outlined in the last century when, from the crucible of world conflicts, it ignited the spark of reconciliation, investing the dream of building tomorrow with yesterday’s enemy , to launch paths of dialogue and inclusion, developing a peace diplomacy that extinguishes conflicts and alleviates tensions, capable of capturing the slightest signs of détente and reading between the most crooked lines”.
His visit will be busy, as he has 11 speeches and about twenty meetings scheduled. One million pilgrims from more than 200 countries are expected this week.
The Europe that was formed on the rubble of the Second World War knows how to “build tomorrow with yesterday’s enemy.” And Lisbon may “suggest a change of pace”, says Francisco, evoking the Treaty that was signed here on December 13, 2007.
In the afternoon, Pope Francis lashed out at the Portuguese clergy for the “scandal” of sexual abuse by priests, affirmed that these actions harmed the church and scared away the faithful, when he began a visit with orders to the Catholic hierarchy to amend their misdemeanors and treat victims better, the AP reported. A commission of experts hired by the Portuguese church reported in February that at least 4,815 girls and boys may have been abused by church personnel since 1950. Before that report, the Portuguese hierarchy had said there were only a handful of cases. . After it aired, he initially refused to remove abusers from their posts or compensate victims.
Lisbon, with views of the ocean, “reminds us of the importance of the whole, of thinking of borders as contact zones, not as borders that separate,” he says. “We know that today’s big problems are global, and yet we often experience inefficiency when it comes to responding to them precisely because when we are faced with common problems, the world is divided, or at least not cohesive enough, unable to face together what that challenges everyone. It seems that planetary injustices, wars, climate and migration crises run faster than the ability, and often the will, to face these challenges together.”
The Treaty of Lisbon affirmed that Europe, “in its relations with the rest of the world, contributes to peace, security, sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights”. And these, the Pope underlined, “are not just words, but milestones on the path of the European community, engraved in the memory of this city: this is the spirit of the whole, animated by the European dream of a broader multilateralism than the mere western context”.
So Francisco asks: “Where are you sailing, Europe?” “Which way are you going, West?” “Your technology, which has marked progress and globalized the world, by itself is not enough; even less the most sophisticated weapons, which do not represent investments for the future, but impoverish true human capital, that of education, health the welfare state”.
The Pontiff looked up: “It is worrying when one reads that in so many places funds are continuously invested in weapons instead of doing so in the future of their children. I dream of a Europe, heart of the West, that puts its ingenuity at the service of turning off sources of war and turning on lights of hope; a Europe that knows how to rediscover its young soul, dreaming of the greatness of the whole and going beyond immediate needs; a Europe that includes peoples and individuals, without pursuing theories and ideological colonizations”.
The appeal to Europe and the West does not stop at war. There is also the question of human life “endangered by utilitarian drifts, which use and discard it”, continues Bergoglio: “I am thinking of so many unborn children and the elderly abandoned to themselves, in the difficulty of welcoming, protecting, promote and integrate those who come from far away and knock on the doors, in the solitude of many families with difficulties in bringing children into the world and raising them.It could also be said here: where are you sailing, Europe and the West, with the discards of The elderly, the walls with barbed wire, the massacres at sea and the empty cradles? Where are you going if, faced with the evil of living, you offer hasty and wrong remedies, such as easy access to death, a convenient solution that seems sweet? , but which is actually more bitter than the waters of the sea?”
The young people who come to Lisbon from two hundred countries around the world “cultivate the desire for unity, peace and fraternity, they provoke us to fulfill their dreams of good, they are not in the streets to shout their anger but to share the hope of the Gospel”, Francis pointed out: “If today a climate of protest and dissatisfaction is breathed in many parts, fertile ground for populism and conspiracy, World Youth Day is an opportunity to build together.”
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