 all the other ways.
7. Hearing of a mother and some women Religious who have helped priests through a crisis prompts me to ask: why should not women also have a hand in governing the Church? Women often function charismatically, with prayer, or on a practical level, like St. Catherine of Siena who obtained the Popes' return Rome. It would be right to promote the role of women in institutions too, since their viewpoint, which is different from that of men, could help priests in decision-making.
I now reply to the parochial vicar of St. Jerome's — I see that he is still very young — who tells us how much women do in the Church and for priests themselves.
How could we imagine the government of the Church without this contribution. which sometimes becomes very visible, such as when St. Hildegard criticized the Bishops or when St. Bridget offered recommendations and St. Catherine of Siena obtained the return of the Popes to Rome? It has always been a crucial factor without which the Church cannot survive.
8. I am responsible for the rehabilitation of the victims of religious sects. I am grateful to you, Your Holiness, for your frequent denunciation of the harm they cause. Many simple people are unable to discover their tricks without help, like unfortunate travellers on the infamous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Your Holiness, do you not think it is urgently necessary today to train Good Samaritans? Would not such preparation be good in the seminaries and in specific courses held at the university level and in the permanent formation of the clergy responsible for the care of souls?
I did not quite understand the words of the eighth intervention. I more or less understood that today, "humanity" on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho falls among robbers. The Good Samaritan offers assistance with the Lord's mercy.
We can only emphasize that in the end, it is man who fell and who falls again and again into the hands of robbers, and it is Christ who heals us. We must and can help him, both in the service of love and in the service of faith, which is also a ministry of love.
9. The Feast of the Holy Patrons of my parish, the Holy Martyrs of Uganda, is celebrated on 3 June. I praise God for this pastoral experience. May more people join in prayer in and for Africa.
Then, the Martyrs of Uganda. Thank you for your contribution. You remind us of the African Continent, which is the great hope of the Church.
In recent months I have received the majority of the African Bishops on their ad limina visits. I found it very edifying and comforting to see Bishops of a high theological and cultural standard. They are zealous Bishops, truly enlivened by the joy of faith. We know that this Church is in good hands, but that she still suffers because the nations are not yet formed.
In Europe it was precisely through Christianity that, in addition to the ethnic groups that existed, the great bodies of nations, the great languages were formed, and thus communion of cultures and places of peace, in opposition to one another, created a new sort of war that had previously not existed.
However, in many parts of Africa we still have this situation where there are above all dominant ethnic groups. The colonial power then imposed boundaries within which nations now have to develop. But there is still the difficulty of finding oneself in a great mass and of discovering, in addition to the ethnic groups, the unity of democratic government groups as well as the possibility of opposing forms of colonial abuse that continue. Africa still continues to be the object of abuse by the great powers, and many conflicts would not have taken this form if the interests of these great powers had not been behind them.
Thus, I have also seen how, in all this confusion, the Church with her Catholic unity is the great factor that unites in dispersion. In many situations, especially now, after the great war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Church has remained the one reality which functions and makes life continue, which provides the necessary assistance, guarantees coexistence and helps to find the possibility of creating one great solution.
In this sense, in these situations, the Church also carries out a service that replaces the political level, giving the possibility of living together and of rebuilding communion after destruction and of rebuilding, after the outburst of hatred, the spirit of reconciliation. Many people have told me that precisely in these situations, the Sacrament of Penance is of great importance as a force of reconciliation and must also be administered with this in view.
In a word, I wanted to say that Africa is a Continent of great hope, of great faith, of moving ecclesial realities, of zealous priests and Bishops. But it has always been a Continent which, after the destruction we brought to it from Europe, needs our brotherly help. And this cannot but be born from faith that also creates universal love, over and above human divisions.
This is our great responsibility in this epoch. Europe has exported its ideologies, its interests, but has also exported, with the mission, the factor of healing, today, we are especially responsible for having a zealous faith that is communicated, that wants to help others, that is aware that giving faith does not mean introducing an alienating power but means giving the true gift that human beings need precisely in order to be creatures of love.
10. I see with concern the situation in Rome, especially the plight of young people and adolescents "on the fringe of humanity", many of whom do not go to church. I believe that priests, lay people and Religious should be closer to our faithful, especially youth, and we should put our charisms at the service of catechesis.
A last point was touched on by the Carmelite parochial vicar of St. Teresa of Avila who has rightly revealed his worries to us.
A simple and superficial optimism which does not discern the great threats to youth, children and families today would certainly be erroneous. We must perceive with great realism these threats that come into being wherever God is absent. We must be more and more aware of our responsibility so that God will be present and thus, the hope and the ability to walk confidently towards the future.
11. Adolescents are victims of today's "desert of love" and suffer appallingly from lack of love. They suffer from the fear of being lonely and misunderstood. Some priests also feel "inwardly dislocated". How can we be experts in "agape", in the fullness of love, in order to be able to make the total gift of ourselves to help them?
I will now continue, starting with the Pontifical Academy. We can tangibly feel today all that you said about the problem of adolescents, their loneliness and their being misunderstood by adults. It is interesting that these young people who seek closeness in discotheques are actually suffering from great loneliness and, of course, also from misunderstanding.
This seems to me, in a certain sense, an expression of the fact that parents, as has been said, are largely absent from the formation of the family. And mothers too are obliged to work outside the home. Communion between them is very fragile.
Each family member lives in a world of his or her own: they are isolated in their thoughts and feelings, which are not united. The great problem of this time — in which each person, desiring to have life for himself, loses it because he is isolated and isolates the other from him is to rediscover the deep communion which in the end can only stem from a foundation that is common to all souls, from the divine presence that unites all of us.
I think that the condition for this is to overcome loneliness and misunderstanding, because the latter also results from the fact that thought today is fragmented. Each one seeks his own way of thinking and living and there is no communication in a profound vision of life. Young people feel exposed to new horizons which previous generations do not share; therefore, continuity in the vision of the world is absent, caught up as it is in an ever more rapid succession of new inventions.
In 10 years changes have taken place which previously never occurred in 100 years. In this way worlds are really separated. I am thinking of my youth and of the "ingenuousness", if you will, in which we lived, in a society that was totally agricultural in comparison with contemporary society. We see that the world is changing at an ever faster pace, so that also with these changes it is fragmented. Therefore, at a moment of renewal and change, the element of stability becomes even more important.
I remember when the conciliar Constitution Gaudiumet Spes was discussed. On the one hand, there was a recognition of the new, of newness, the "yes" of the Church to the new epoch with its innovations, its "no" to the romanticism of the past, a proper and necessary "no".
However, the Fathers — proof of this is also in the text — also said that in spite of this, in spite of the necessary willingness to move forward and even leave behind other things that were dear to us, there is something, that does not change, because it is the human being himself, his being as a creature.
Man is not completely historical. The absolutizing of historicism, in the sense that man is only and always a creature, the product of a certain period, is not true. His nature as a creature exists, and is is precisely this that gives us the possibility to live through change and to retain our identity.
This is not an instant response to what we should do, but it seems to me that the first step should be to obtain the diagnosis. Moreover, why should this loneliness