Interreligious Encounter with Youth

On his second apostolic trip to Africa, Pope Francis, in Mozambique, met with the young people for an inter-religious meeting on September 5, at the Maxaquene Stadium in Maputo.

Here are 13 advices that the Pope Francis recommended to the young people in his speech:

1. You are important! You need to know this. You need to believe it. You are important! But be humble.
2. A shared and celebrated joy, a joy that that reconciles and becomes the best remedy against all those who want to create dissension among you.
3. Do not let yourselves be robbed of joy. Keep singing and expressing yourselves in fidelity to all the goodness that you have learned from your traditions.
4. It is not good to give up!
5. It is essential never to forget that social enmity is destructive. The world is destroyed by enmity. And the greatest enmity of all is war. So find ways of building social friendship.
6. “If you want to get somewhere in a hurry, walk alone; if you want to go far, walk with others”.
7. Dream with others, never against others. Keep dreaming the way you dreamed and prepared for this meeting: all together and without barriers.
8. The enemy of dreams and commitment is not just giving up but also anxiety.
9. The most beautiful things take shape over time, and if something doesn’t work out at first, don’t be afraid to keep trying.
10. Peace is a process that you too are called to advance, by being ever ready to reach out to those experiencing hardship.
11. Try to grow in friendship with those who think differently than you, so that solidarity will increase among you and become the best weapon to change the course of history.
12. Many people, including a great number of young people, have already taken up the pressing challenge of protecting our common home. This is the challenge before us: to protect our common home.
13. Let me leave you with a final thought: God loves you, and this is something on which all our religious traditions are agreed.