Pope Benedict: WYD a remedy to Europe’s faith fatigue

Could New Evangelisation be the answer to the current economic crisis gripping Europe and much of the Western World? According to Pope Benedict, the global financial malaise is a sign of a far deeper one – a spiritual vacuum – and it is the Churches call to fill that vacuum with the Gospel message of life, light and hope. But this also calls for renewed energy and a radical change in the way the Church evangelises. Again, Pope Benedict has the answer, She needs to look to Africa for passion and learn from young Catholics about the new experience of catholicity, of the Church’s universality.

This was Pope Benedict XVI’s main message to his closest collaborators, the members of the Roman Curia, who gathered around the Holy Father Thursday for the traditional exchange of Christmas greetings. It is also when the Pope is known to give his ‘state of the Church’ address, when he takes a look back at the year that was and ponders the future of the Catholic faith.
“As this year draws to a close, Europe is undergoing an economic and financial crisis, which is ultimately based on the ethical crisis looming over the Old Continent”, he said, which place us before some quite fundamental questions that “must be answered by our proclamation of the Gospel, by the new evangelization”.

The Pope retraced his various pastoral visits, both within Italy and abroad, and the establishment of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation and the looked ahead to the Synod on the same theme to be held next year.

Placing particular emphasis on his September visit to his native Germany birthplace of the Reformation, the Pope said: “Not only faithful believers but also outside observers are noticing with concern that regular churchgoers are growing older all the time and that their number is constantly diminishing; that recruitment of priests is stagnating; that scepticism and unbelief are growing”

While there are endless debates over what must be done in order to reverse the trend Pope Benedict said: “The essence of the crisis of the Church in Europe – as I argued in Freiburg – is the crisis of faith. If we find no answer to this, if faith does not take on new life, deep conviction and real strength from the encounter with Jesus Christ, then all other reforms will remain ineffective”.


On this point, Pope Benedict pointed to Africa’s joyful passion for faith – which he experienced in his recent trip to Benin - as a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today.

A further remedy against faith fatigue he said was the wonderful experience of World Youth Day in Madrid, describing it as “the new evangelization put into practice”. In fact the Pope went into great length to explain in five points to the Cardinals, Archbishops and priests of the Curia, why he felt they could learn more from World Youth Days – and in particular young Catholics.

Firstly, he said because they represent a new experience of catholicity, of the Church’s universality. Despite different languages, ways of life and different cultural backgrounds, outward separation and difference is relativized. This largely because we are one family who pray in the same way, overcoming “all trials and times of darkness” together in faith.

Secondly, the Pope told those gathered that one of his most important experiences in Madrid was the meeting with the army of World Youth Day volunteers who “had given a part of their lives in faith, not because it was asked of them” not to find fulfilment” as often some Christians do. He said from this derives “a new way of living our humanity, our Christianity”.


The third element, he said that has an increasingly natural and central place in the lives and faith of young people, is adoration. Here Pope Benedict recalled the 2010 Hyde Park vigil when tens of thousands of predominantly young people responded in eloquent silence to the Lord’s sacramental presence, in adoration. This encounter with the certainty of God’s tangible love for us with love in our own hearts, he said determines lives.

Neither is young Catholic’s understanding of the Sacrament of Confession to be overlooked, because “we need the humility that constantly asks God for forgiveness, that seeks purification and awakens in us the counterforce, the positive force of the Creator, to draw us upwards”.

Finally, and above all, concluded Pope Benedict there is one last feature, not to be overlooked, of the spirituality of World Youth Days, namely the young people’s joy based on the faith: I am wanted; I have a task; I am accepted, I am loved.

Because : “Only faith gives me the conviction: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being, even in hard times. Faith makes one happy from deep within. That is one of the wonderful experiences of World Youth Days”.