Lisbon, Portugal
Reuters
Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving young people from around the globe gave Pope Francis a raucous welcome to the World Youth Day festival in Portugal’s capital Thursday, in a sign of youthful support for the 86-year-old pontiff and his calls for inclusivity and economic justice.
In a display of enthusiasm not seen since the early years of Francis’ decade-old papacy, teenagers and young adults thronged a downtown Lisbon park for the opening ceremony of the Catholic jamboree. Pilgrims ran alongside as his popemobile made languid loops through the crowd and a smiling Francis basked in their cheers.
Pope Francis arrives as he attends a gathering at the Eduardo VII Park with young people participating into the 37th World Youth Day, in Lisbon, on Thursday, 3rd August, 2023. Pope Francis is on his second day of a five-day pastoral visit to Portugal that includes the participation at the 37th World Youth Day, and a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Fatima. PICTURE: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia.
The Pope, who was hospitalised twice this year, had said he hoped to be “rejuvenated” by his five-day trip to Portugal, and it appeared as if the sun-baked crowd delivered.
Organisers estimated some 500,000 pilgrims attended the music-and-dance filled World Youth Day opening ceremony in Lisbon’s Eduardo VII Park, a figure that was expected to more than double during the festival’s coming days.
Volunteers with huge water packs on their backs doled out water to keep the youngsters hydrated, an increasing concern given temperatures are expected to soar to 40 degrees Celsius by Sunday, when Francis closes out the festival with a final outdoor Mass.
Francis is in Portugal through the weekend to preside over the jamboree that St John Paul II launched in the 1980s to encourage young Catholics in their faith. The Argentine Jesuit has picked up John Paul’s mantle with gusto as he seeks to inspire the next generation to rally behind his key social justice and environmental priorities.
On Thursday, he emphasised his call for the Catholic Church to be welcoming to all, sinners included.
“There is room for everyone in the church,” Francis told the crowd, leading the young people in a chant of “todos,” which is Spanish and Portuguese for “everyone.”
“I think he is a very modern Pope. I like his thoughts on many things,” Gaia Selva, 27, who traveled to Lisbon from Italy with a group of 374 members of the Salesian religious order and was in the park for the opening ceremony. “I hope his support can help us as youth but also others, to understand our religion better and to live it to the fullest.”
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Maria Seybert, 19, of Littletown, Colorado, was attending her first World Youth Day and seemed inspired by Francis’ exhortations to spread the faith.
“Yeah, I know that our church is very broken; we have a lot of sinners and broken people,” Seybert said. “I desire to hear something that encourages us to recognise our poverty and woundedness, and then run with it.”
Pope Francis attends a gathering at the Eduardo VII Park with young people in Lisbon, on Thursday, 3rd August, 2023. PICTURE: AP Photo/Armando Franca.
Pope Francis paints a mural during a meeting with young members of Scholas Occurrentes in Cascais, Portugal, on 3rd August, 2023. PICTURE: Vatican Media/Handout via Reuters
NOT EXACTLY MICHELANGELO, POPE FRANCIS TRIES HIS HAND AT MURAL PAINTING
Pope Francis, whose predecessors commissioned the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel centuries ago, tried his hand at painting on Thursday when he put the final touches on a three kilometre long mural while visiting a school west of Lisbon.
The mural is part of the “Life between Worlds” project by Scholas Occurrentes, an international educational movement that links about half a million schools on five continents. Francis is the group’s main sponsor.
About 30 murals painted by students and community members were brought together to form a single work in the seaside town of Cascais.
The ceiling and walls of the room where the pope spoke to the students, and where the mural ends, were covered with painted themes such as human figures floating in the cosmos.
“You guys have painted your own Sistine Chapel,” Francis said.
The 86-year-old Pope was given an artist’s paintbrush attached to a virtual reality gadget that allowed students at a school in Mozambique to see his brush strokes on a wall in their school in real time.
The first try did not go well. The Pope, looking a bit bewildered, gave it a second try and managed to paint a green line in the shape of half of an elliptical arch.
“It’s very virtual but not very physical,” José María Del Corral, president of Scholas Occurrentes, joked between the Pope’s first and second attempts.
The real Sistine Chapel in the Vatican gets its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who had it built between 1473 and 1481. Michelangelo painted the ceiling for Pope Julius II between 1508 and 1512.
Francis, who is Lisbon for a global gathering of young Catholics, told the students at the school not to be afraid to take chances in life and to help downtrodden people.
“Sometimes in life, you have to get your hands dirty in order to keep your hearts clean,” he told the students, who included non-Catholics and non-believers.
“Pray for me and those of you who do not know how to pray, send me good vibes,” he said.
– PHILIP PULLELLA and PATRICIA VICENTE RUA, Lisbon, Portugal/Reuters
Many young Catholics around the world have embraced Francis’ core teachings about correcting economic injustices and promoting environmental custodianship, joining church-sponsored foundations and social movements under the banner of the “Economy of Francis” and the “Laudato Si'” movement, named for Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment.
Francis pressed those causes again Thursday, first at Catholic University, one of Portugal’s top institutions of higher learning, where he urged students to take risks and reject the temptation to merely perpetuate the status quo, or what the pope called the “present global system of elitism and inequality.”
“An academic degree should not be seen merely as a license to pursue personal well-being, but as a mandate to work for a more just and inclusive – that is, truly progressive – society,” he said.
Francis encouraged the students to use the privilege of their educations to protect the environment, care about poor and marginalised people, and to “redefine what we mean by progress and development.”
“Yours can be the generation that takes up this great challenge,” he said. “We need to align the tragedy of desertification with that of refugees, the issue of increased migration with that of a declining birth rate, and to see the material dimension of life within the greater purview of the spiritual.”
Francis next met with another group of students in Cascais, a beachside resort town, at the local branch of Scolas Occurrentes, a foundation he started years ago to bring young people from different backgrounds and nationalities together. Sitting in a brilliantly painted common room, Francis told them that a life without chaos or crises was like drinking distilled water: tasteless and “gross”.
“It’s important to walk together, resolve crises together and go forward, growing,” he said.
As he left, popular singer Cuca Roseta serenaded him with a sentimental, a cappella fado version of Ave Maria. Along his motorcade route was a three-kilometre-long banner that Scolas members had painted in honour of his visit.
Francis’ visit to Portugal is aimed primarily at young people, but his message about reversing economic inequalities has found resonance among people of all ages, who lined his route and watched from hotel balconies or the street as his motorcade passed.
“It’s a big issue and more should be done about it,” Alison Morais, 42, a Brazilian immigrant who works as a store assistant in Cascais. “It’s hard to change it, but at least people listen to what [the Pope] says and it gets the conversation going.”
Pope Francis and Scholas Occurrentes’ President Jose Maria del Corral, second from left, attend a meeting with members of the Scholas Occurrentes community of young people, an International educational movement created by Pope Francis himself, in Cascais, 25 kilometres south of Lisbon, on Thursday, 3rd August, 2023. PICTURE: Marco Bertorello pool via AP.
Francis is scheduled Friday to visit some charities and hear the confessions of some young pilgrims before presiding over a Way of the Cross procession. He travels to the Catholic shrine in Fatima on Saturday and then celebrates an open-air vigil Saturday and final Mass on Sunday morning.
After arriving in Lisbon on Wednesday, the Pope immediately addressed Portugal’s clergy sexual abuse crisis, which intensified after a panel of experts hired by the country’s bishops reported in February that priests and other church personnel may have abused at least 4,815 boys and girls since 1950.
Meeting with the bishops at Lisbon’s iconic Jeronimos Monastery, Francis said the “scandal” of sexual abuse had marred the face of the Catholic Church and helped drive the faithful away. He told the bishops that abuse victims must always be welcomed and heard.
The Pope met for more than an hour that night with 13 victims at the Vatican Embassy.
