Roman Committee

Thursday, March 20, Pope Paul VI Hall in the Vatican: 15,000 young people receive the Gospel of Mark, in the scope of the citizens' mission undertaken by the Pope for the diocese of Rome to prepare for the great Jubilee of the year 2000. It is the same Pope John Paul II who, at the end of the encounter with the young people of Rome, after an afternoon of festivity and reflection, handed over the gospel text to some of them; making the same gesture as 12,000 lay missionaries (many of them young people) who in the past weeks had passed the texts out to families of the city.

The encounter's slogan, which by now as a matter of tradition precedes Palm Sunday every year and this year made part of the itinerary August's World Day of Youth in Paris, is emblematic: "Mission: pass the word on". A likeable and effective expression, to underline the invitation given to the youth present to witness to the Gospel received as a gift, to live the Word of God every day, to "pass the word on" in the family, school, university and work environment. The diocesan pastoral program of 1996-97 invites each parish to put a service to the youth in action, to celebrate a parish Youth Day, to re-launch the oratory as a missionary reality turned towards all the youth of the neighborhood, to activate "centers of listening" for youth. On the level of spirituality and formation, the principal instructions are the promotion of appropriate schools of prayer and the valuing of the family as the primary educational environment; but, above all, the formation of those who themselves form youth, an authentic pastoral urgency, to which was dedicated last March the first diocesan meeting for those who work in the youth pastoral mission. In the next months the birth of a true and proper school is forseen for those who form the youth, with an adequate agenda of preparation. Furthermore, a diocesan Council for the youth pastoral and an Observatory on the conditions of youth in Rome will be instituted. Meanwhile, a diocesan school of music has been active for a few months in forming qualified liturgical animators.

Coordinating all of these activities is the diocesan service center for the youth pastoral, constructed in 1993 as a tool of communion and placed at the disposition of every ecclesial reality operating in the youth world. The service center proposes appropriate teaching aids for catechesis and annual formation, places in action common diocesan initiatives on the catechetical theme of the year (among the more recent was a course of sex education promoted in collaboration with the Roman Movement for Life), coordinates the participation of Roman youth at the World Youth Day.

Regarding this last point, the current commitment is noteworthy. The number of those who signed up for Paris is very large. The encounter on the banks of the Seine will conclude the "year of the youth"; the words of the Pope will provide new stimuli for following with determination the path of youth pastoral work in dioceses.