Rome (Italy). The Documentation Section of the YP Sector, of the FMA Institute Web Site, published n. 12 of the Youth Pastoral Series. This issue presents in full the contribution that the Education Commission of the UISG (International Union Superiors General) and of the USG (Union Superiors General (USG), of which the FMA YP is a part as an Institute with an educational charism, sent to the General Secretariat of Synod 2018 as a “choral” contribution of Congregations and Institutes of Consecrated Life working in the educational field, together with lay people, educators- partners, and young religious, and the young people of youth movements of Religious Families involved in education.
It is a contribution that can stimulate and prepare us for the Synod, to reflect on in the Educating Communities worldwide and above all to listen to young people in the contexts they live in, involving them and recognizing that, as Pope Francis always emphasizes, the best evangelizers of the young are young people themselves.
This conviction and practice was reiterated on the morning of February 16, 2018 in the Press Office of the Holy See, in the Press Conference on the Pre-Synodal Meeting that will take place in Rome from March 19 to 24, the time chosen to allow all young people invited to Rome to participate, at the conclusion of the work, in the celebration of the Eucharist on Palm Sunday in St Peter’s Square on the occasion of the XXXIII World Youth Day on the theme “Do not be afraid, Mary, because you have found favor with God” (Lk 1:30) .
The Pre-Synodal Meeting of next March, a step on a journey in which 315 young people from all over the world will participate, together with some parents, educators, priests, pastoral workers, and experts of the youth world, does not want to be “on” young people, considered as simple ‘objects’ of study, but “with the young and for the young”: they will have space to be actors and protagonists, with their language, their enthusiasm, and their sensitivity, with their questions, the sharing of doubts, questions, to build together a new dialog between young people and the Church.
The ten objectives of the Pre-Synodal Meeting express the will to identify new pastoral paths, a method of exchange, and intergenerational collaboration, to elaborate a shared document that will be delivered to the Pope on Sunday 25 March and will merge, together with the other contributions received, into the ‘Instrumentum laboris, the document on which the Synodal Fathers will work next October.
The young people present at the press conference highlighted their joy of being involved and the journey together and presented the idea of virtually extending participation in the Pre-Synodal Meeting through social networks: in this way, young people from every continent can follow the work remotely in real time and also interact with those present in Rome, by sending ideas and reflections. In this way, through the social networks, the Pre-Synodal Meeting will broaden the “audience” of the young people involved.
So much preparation, resources, tools, and above all, evangelical paths of proximity to make the young people of the world feel involved in this path of sharing and listening that is very dear to the Church of today, God’s people journeying in the third millennium.
