Scottish Catholic Observer

Pope Benedict XVI has called on world leaders to ‘welcome and value’ young people, who he encouraged to play their part in building a more ‘just’ future in his message for the World Day of Peace 2012.

The Holy Father (right) praised the youth of the world in his message saying ‘young people recognise the dignity and beauty of every human life, including their own, and should be supported in their natural desire to make the world a better place.’

The Church celebrates World Day of Peace on January 1, and the Pope’s message for the occasion was released last Friday at the Vatican and sent, through Vatican ambassadors, to the leaders of nations around the world.

The theme the Pope chose for the 2012 celebration was Educating Young People in Justice and Peace.

Listen to youth

The Holy Father said in his message that parents and teachers should be more attentive to the hopes and fears of young people today and to their search for true values, and he asked governments to put more resources into education and job creation.

The Pope also asked young people themselves to take their schooling seriously and to be open to the example and knowledge their elders have to share.

“Today more than ever we need authentic witnesses, and not simply people who parcel out rules and facts,” the Pope said. “We need witnesses capable of seeing farther than others because their life is so much broader.”

Educating people in justice and peace begins in the family, where they learn to value the gift of life, solidarity, respect for rules, forgiveness and hospitality, he said.

Too many young people today are missing that basic human formation because ‘we are living in a world where families, and life itself, are constantly threatened and not infrequently fragmented’, he said.

Parents, Pope Benedict said, had a duty to give their children ‘the most precious of treasures,’ the gift of their time.

The Pope also urged governments to make it possible for parents to choose the type of education they want their children to receive and to enact immigration reforms aimed at ‘reuniting families separated by the need to earn a living.’

Reaction

Presenting the message at a Vatican news conference, Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the Pope’s message highlights the fact that he sees young people not only as hope for the future, but as ‘an active part, the most vital part of the human family’ in a world that needs energy and new ideas now.

Bishop Mario Toso, secretary of the justice and peace council, said the young people who energised the Arab Spring movements toward democracy this year illustrate the fact that the young have a positive role to play in society today.

They proclaimed to the world that ‘there can be social justice in their societies if there is democracy and, vice versa, that if there is democracy, there can be social justice,’ he said.