Father Rossano Sala participated last week in the Southern Days of Clergy Updating dedicated to the theme “Synodal Church, a Church attentive to the Signs of the Times” in Albufeira. The Salesian priest stated that WYD Lisbon 2023 should be an “opportunity not to be missed” for the Church and for society.
In one of the conferences he gave, entitled “Young Evangelizers of Youth. The Challenge of WYD 2023,” Fr. Rossano argued that this World Youth Day “is above all an opportunity not to be missed, not only in terms of content and new practices, but above all in terms of style, of a way of proceeding, of a shared journey with young people.
“I imagine that, at the level of the universal Church, the next WYD in Lisbon will be the great sign of rebirth and recovery after the difficult experience of the pandemic, of a rainbow of reconfirmed alliance with God and among people,” he said.
For the professor of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome and special secretary of the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops 2018, every World Youth Day is an “ecclesial laboratory of renewal”. Therefore WYD in Lisbon is “a gift, a grace, before being a challenge”, and it is important that it is not an isolated event, disconnected from the lives of young people, “a closed and self-referential moment of faith” or “an expression of a Eurocentric or intercultural Church”.
In his opinion, the meeting of thousands of young people from all over the world with the Pope promoted by the Church must respect the “context of the normal life of today’s youth”, which is intercultural and multireligious, as well as promoting dialogue between generations.
The Southern Meeting for Updating the Clergy brought together, from January 16 to 19, about 70 participants, including bishops, priests and deacons from the Dioceses of the Algarve, Beja, Évora and Setúbal, at a meeting organized by the Evora Higher Institute of Theology in Albufeira.
Photo: ECCLESIA Agency/OC
