Panama City, Panama (2019)

Date: 23-28 January 2019

Pontificate: Pope Francis

Theme: “I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38)   

Song: Hágase en mí, según tu palabra (May it be done to me according to your word)

“You, dear young people, are not just the future. … You young people are the present moment, the now of God.” This is what the pope told them in his homily at the concluding Mass of WYD in Panama. There were over 700,000 young people there.  They were told to “speak out and fulfil the dream that the Lord has dreamed for you.” Pope Francis emphasised the relationship between the present and the future. In his address to the young people, he warned them not to “think that your mission, your vocation, even your life itself, is a promise far off in the future, having nothing to do with the present. As if being young were a kind of waiting room, where we sit around until we are called. In the meantime, we adults or you yourselves invent a hygienically sealed future, without consequences, where everything is safe, secure and well insured.” The pope regarded this as “make-believe” happiness. Young people were being numbed into keeping quiet and not being a nuisance and asking too many questions, “and in that ‘meantime’ your dreams lose their buoyancy, they seem to move slowly, and they begin to become flat and dreary, petty and plaintive. This is only because we think, or you think, that your ‘now’ has not yet come, that you are too young to be involved in dreaming about and working for the future.”

The pope said that this cannot and must not be the case. “One of the fruits of the last Synod was the enrichment that came from being able to meet and above all to listen to one another. The enrichment of intergenerational dialogue, the enrichment of exchange and the value of realising that we need one another, that we have to work to create channels and spaces that encourage dreaming of and working for tomorrow, starting today.”
This is also how WYD should be experienced. “In a special way throughout these days, Mary’s fiat has been whispering like a kind of music in the background. She not only believed in God and in God’s promises as something possible, she believed God and dared to say ‘yes’ to taking part in this ‘present moment’ of the Lord.
Finally the Pope asked the question: “Dear young friends, do you want to live out your love in a practical way? May your ‘yes’ continue to be the gateway for the Holy Spirit to give us a new Pentecost for the Church and for the world.”

All of the Holy Father’s speeches at WYD in Panama: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/travels/2019/outside/documents/papa-francesco-gmg-panama-2019.html

Summary based on the data sheet published by frontierarieti.com, organ of the Diocese of Rieti.