WYD 2013: Pope Francis speaks to journalists on papal plane to Brazil
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis greeted some seventy journalists aboard the papal plane
Monday as it flew from Rome to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for World Youth Day celebrations.
The reporters included 10 Brazilians, 10 from the U.S., 9 from France, 6 from Spain,
plus journalists from the U.K. Mexico, Germany, Japan, Argentina, Poland, Portugal
and Russia.
In a brief exchange with the journalists, the Pope expressed particular
concern about the risk of an entire generation of people without jobs. Tracey McClure
reports: listen:
Pope Francis
told reporters “this first trip of mine is to meet young people, (to see them) … not
as isolated young people but immersed in their social context, in society. Because
when we isolate young people, we do them an injustice: we take away their ‘belonging.’”
Young people, the Holy Father said, “belong to a family, to a country, to
a culture and a faith.” They represent the future of a people “because they have the
energy;” but Pope Francis added, “the future is also the elderly because they are
the custodians of the ‘wisdom of life’, the history, the home and the family." A people
has no future - he continued - if it goes ahead without the strength of its youth
and the elderly.
The Pope reflected on the global economic crisis and the possibility
that young people may find themselves out of work. "We have the risk of having a generation
that did not have work" said the Pope. And from work he noted, one derives "the dignity
of the person" - "from earning his bread."
“Young people today are in crisis,”
he said, “and we are used to this disposable culture: it happens all too often to
the elderly.” But young jobless people are also getting caught up in this disposable
culture. What we need today he said, is a "culture of inclusion, a culture of encounter."
And this invitation to reporters: "I ask you to help me”- concluded the Pope - and
work for the good of the society of young people and the elderly."
Greeting
the Pope on behalf of all the journalists, Valentina Alazraki, correspondent in Italy
for the Mexican network Televisa, gave him a small statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
"not only the Queen of Mexico,” said the journalist, “but Patroness of all America.”
In her brief introductory remarks, Alazraki cited the biblical story of Daniel in
the lions' den, referring to journalists who are often portrayed as such. Pope Francis
joked on this point by stating that lions "were not so bad" and confessed to not his
not readily giving interviews because “it's a bit exhausting to do them.”