Fifty thousand people were present at the first World Children’s Day event, which took place at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. Francis responded to questions from some of those present, coming from 101 countries: it is always possible to make peace, remember, and to make the world a better place we must start by loving those closest to us. Prayer for those who are not hungry and work. Selfishness and war, he underlines, are the cause of injustices
Michele Raviart – Vatican City
Children know how to make peace and have the urge to shout it to everyone. They even take the microphone away from the Pope to say that “forgiving and apologizing” is the best way to stop arguing. 50 thousand at the Olympic Stadium in Rome answer “yes” to the questions that Francis asks them – “Is it true that peace is always possible? Are you sad about the wars? Is peace a beautiful thing?” – and their “no” to war and the devil is equally convinced. The first World Children’s Day, Francis explains to them, is the “kick-off” to a movement for little ones “who want to build a world of peace”, in which everyone is a brother, and which has a future thanks to care of everyone for the environment around us.
Loving those closest to us
Talk to each other kindly, play together, help others. “By doing these things the world will be better,” Francis reminds Lia Marise from Burundi, one of the 101 countries represented today, from Afghanistan to Zambia. The Pope asks all those present to exchange a gesture of peace, after having toured the pitch of the Stadium in the popemobile and having sat next to the children to hear their questions. He gives each of them a smile and some sweets. “How can you love everyone. Everyone. Everyone?”, asks Riccardo, a Roma child from Scampia. Let’s start by loving those who are closest to us, the Pope replies, and so we move forward.
God is new
In his greeting to the children, Francis urges them to repeat “Behold, I make all things new”, the motto of the Day, sponsored by the Dicastery for Culture and Education – represented by the Cardinal Prefect José Tolentino de Mendonça, who opens the afternoon together with the presenter Carlo Conti – together with the Community of Sant’Egidio and the Auxilium cooperative and coordinated by Father Enzo Fortunato and Aldo Cagnoli, who accompany the various artistic and testimony moments of the afternoon. “God wants this, everything that is not new passes away. God is new. The Lord always gives us news. Jesus loves you”, the Pope recalls again, inviting the children to move forward with joy, because “joy is health for the soul”.
A minute of silence for injustices
“I am happy to be with you because you are joyful and have the joy of hope for the future”, Francis reiterates shortly after, and if I could work a miracle, he replies to an Indonesian little girl who asked him, I would ask that all children have the necessary to live, eat and go to school and that “everyone is happy”. It’s true, he also tells Ali from Pakistan, that we are all brothers and sisters. However, many people do not have a home or a job. “Why?” asks a child from Nicaragua. “It is the fruit of malice, selfishness and war”, underlines the Pontiff. Many countries spend money to make weapons and there are people who don’t have anything to eat. “Every day pray for the children who suffer this injustice”, is the invitation that Francis addresses to the thousands of children who are in the stands and around him, insisting on keeping a minute of silence for the injustices.
Speak to those who have a hard heart
“How do adults open their hearts?”, asks Ido from South Korea, protagonist of the short “La Casa dei tutti”, a representation of the spirit of WYD, in which he meets a homeless man and takes him to St. Peter’s Basilica. There are many closed people “with hard hearts, with hearts that seem like a wall”, says the Pope. It is not easy, he repeats, but you children must have this illusion of doing things that make adults think. You must knock on the doors of adults and ask these questions and also ask them to God. “You children can make a real revolution with these questions and with these anxieties,” he urges.
“Long live the grandparents!”
Francesco’s thoughts also go to the elderly, prompted by Iolanda’s question. “Long live the grandparents”, she asks them to shout to the children at the Olimpico, after having remembered the importance of seeing them and going to visit them, because “they are great”, they gave their lives for their family and pass on history. A joke, on the other hand, is an answer to a question about sport. I’m happy when Argentina wins the World Cup, “but once they won it with their hand and that wasn’t good”, she says, recalling Maradona’s goal against England in 1986.
Testimonies from around the world
The event at the Olympic Stadium was marked by testimonies, music and sport. A child from each continent spoke about his life and what worries him. Victor, 13 years old, from Bethlehem, has been seeing the sky occupied by missiles for eight months and asks himself: “What fault do we children have if we were born in Bethlehem, Jerusalem or Gaza? Eugenia, from Kharkiv in Ukraine, wants peace and she doesn’t want children to hear bombs falling and see death. Mila, from New Zealand, fears for the future of the planet due to the increase in floods, just as Mateo from Buenos Aires said he is worried about the children who are sick and have nothing to eat.
Tolentino: children are masters of friendship and forgiveness
The children, explained in the initial greeting Cardinal Josè Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, which sponsored the event, “are masters precisely of those universal arts that today’s world urgently needs “, such as the art of friendship, of embrace, of forgiveness, of fraternal coexistence, of simple joy, of the acceptance of differences as a richness and not as a threat, of faith lived in a vibrant and neutral way”. The next event of World Children’s Day is the Mass in St. Peter’s Square presided over by Pope Francis tomorrow 26 May.
