VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church must create spaces where marginalized individuals — including young people, the elderly and those with disabilities — can engage with one another and find their place in society, Pope Francis said.
“Every human life has an inalienable dignity,” he said during a meeting Jan. 10 with organizers of a French association that organizes educational solidarity projects. “By your commitment, you proclaim that no one is worthless, no one is unworthy, that every existence is a gift from God to be received with love and respect.”
The French association, “Écoles de Vie” (“Schools of Life”) is guided by the values of Catholic social teaching and creates educational opportunities within schools for people from different generations, people with disabilities and people from difference socioeconomic groups to exchange ideas and skills.
The association’s mission embodies the “outgoing church” that Pope Francis said he has often called for: “an open church, a welcoming church, able to become close to each person and to heal the wounds of those who suffer, to caress with tenderness those who are without affection and to lift up those who have fallen to the ground.”
The church, he said, should be particularly attentive to young people’s development.
“We are called to create spaces in which they can fully express themselves,” the pope said. “We must make space for their dreams, to welcome them and communicate hope to them.”
Young people, he said, “are rich in unexpected potential,” and he praised the organization’s efforts to help them “discover that their life has a meaning and that they have a unique role to play in society.”
During the current Jubilee Year, centered on a message of hope, Pope Francis encouraged the group to continue their efforts which “restore to all people marginalized by disability or frailty their place within a fraternal and joyful community,” because “only by restoring centrality to the human person, by integrating his or her spiritual dimensions, can we build a truly just and supportive society.”
Later in the day, the pope met with leaders from the “Mission Congress” project in France which organizes annual gatherings to empower Christians to embrace and share their faith and work for social change through workshops, discussions and spiritual events.
The pope similarly encouraged the organizers to not be afraid to “go out” and encounter “men and women living their joys and their pains.”
“This is how you bring hope, both in your communities and in places where the church sometimes seems tired or withdrawn,” he said.
The many challenges the world faces — war, injustice, widespread individualism — “breeds doubt, fear of the future and many times despair,” the pope said. “But we Christians bring a certainty: Christ is our hope.”
Pope Francis also encouraged them to be engaged with young people, calling the next generations “the first pilgrims of hope.”
“Pass on to them the audacity to dream of a more fraternal world and accompany them so that they may become artisans of hope in their families, schools and workplaces,” he said.
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