Friday, January 18, 2019

Video message for World Day of Indigenous Youth

From 17 to 21 January 2019, in Soloy, located within the Panamanian Diocese of David, a special World Meeting of Indigenous Youth is taking place in preparation for World Youth Day 2019 where more than one thousand indigenous youth from various parts of the world are expected to participate.

The Holy Father has sent a video message to those who are participating in the World Meeting of Indigenous Youth.


Video Message of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
addressed to those who are participating in the
World Meeting of Indigenous Youth

Dear young people,

At the conclusion of World Youth Day in Krakow in July 2016, I told the young volunteers: We assume the memory of our past to build the future with courage. And this is the motto that you have chosen for this World Meeting of Indigenous Youth that brought you together from January 17 to 21 of this year (pre-GMG) in Soloy, Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, in the Diocese of David, Panama.

I congratulate you because this is the first time that a pre-WYD meeting has been organized specifically for youth of indigenous and native peoples at the world level. It is an initiative for which I would like to thank the Section for the Pastoral Care of the Indigenous People of the Bishops' Conference of Panama, supported by CELAM.

Dear young people, I urge you that this meeting, which brings together hundreds of young people from different native peoples, may serve to reflect and celebrate your faith in Jesus Christ starting with the millennial richness of your original cultures. I urge you to see this be an opportunity for you to respond to the invitation, addressed to young people at other times, to be grateful for the history of your peoples and courageous in the face of the challenges that surround you, to move forward full of hope in building another possible world.

Return to native cultures. Take care of your roots, because from your roots comes the strength that will make you grow, prosper and bear fruit. It must also be a way of showing the indigenous face of our Church in the context of WYD and of affirming our commitment to protect our Common Home and to collaborate in building another possible world, that is more just and more human.

Undoubtedly, the themes that, according to the programme, will be the object of your reflection, will stimulate the search for answers, from an evangelical perspective, including so many and scandalous situations of marginalization, exclusion, waste and impoverishment to which millions of young people are condemned, especially the youth of native peoples, in the world. May your actions, the awareness of belonging to your peoples, be a reaction against this culture of waste, against this culture of forgetting your roots, projected towards a future that is ever more liquid, gaseous and without foundation.

Boys and girls, take care of your cultures! Take care of your roots! But don't stop there: from those roots grow, flower, bear fruit. A poet has said that everything that the tree has in bloom, comes from what is underground. The roots . But roots taken  into the future. Projected into the future. This is your challenge today.

It will be a pleasure for me to meet you in Panama. And in the meantime, my best wishes for your meeting and I give you my blessing.

Jatuaida, Jamorogodre.
May God bless you!
(Original text in Spanish)

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