Vatican City, Jun 15, 2017 / 02:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops announced the launch of a new website for the upcoming synod on youth, and encouraged young people to take the survey available there.
The theme for the 50th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, set to take place in 2018, is “Young People, the Faith and the Discernment of Vocation.” It follows the much-talked about Extraordinary and Ordinary Synods of Bishops on the Family, held in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
While much of the new website is currently only available in Italian, it includes a survey for young people in multiple different languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
The answers to the survey will be sent to the synod’s Secretary General, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, through November 30, 2017, and will be used to provide the bishops with an understanding of what it’s like to be a young person in the Church.
The preparatory document for the synod defines youth as being individuals 16-29 years old, but also takes into account that the definition of “young” is different depending on where you’re from. The survey allows for answers from people born in the year 1950 or later.
The broad survey includes questions about education, home and family life, what young people think about themselves, and how much trust they have in institutions such as the government and the Church.
It is part of an “extensive consultation that the General Secretariat is doing at all levels of the people of God,” according to a Vatican statement.
The website also includes videos, photos and messages from the Pope to young people, as well as the preparatory document and a history of the synod.
The theme for the 2018 synod was announced in October 2016.
“Through every phase of this Synod, the Church wants again to state her desire to encounter, accompany and care for every young person, without exception,” the preparatory document reads.
“The Church cannot, nor does she wish to, abandon them to the isolation and exclusion to which the world exposes them.”
According to the document, the Church wants to ask young people how best to reach them with the message of the Gospel.
“By listening to young people, the Church will once again hear the Lord speaking in today’s world. Listening to their aspirations, the Church can glimpse the world which lies ahead and the paths the Church is called to follow.”
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Pope Francis at the Jubilee of the Sick in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, April 6, 2025, wearing nasal cannulas for supplemental oxygen as he continues recovering from bilateral pneumonia. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/EWTN News
CNA Newsroom, Apr 6, 2025 / 07:32 am (CNA).
Still recovering from bilateral pneumonia that hospitalized him for nearly 40 days, Pope Francis made a surprise appearance in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for the Jubilee of the Sick, sharing profound reflections on suffering, care, and the transformative power of illness.
Wearing nasal cannulas that provide supplemental oxygen, Pope Francis arrived in a wheelchair accompanied by a nurse.
Pope Francis blesses the faithful at the Jubilee of the Sick in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, on April 6, 2025, as his personal nurse, Massimo Strappetti, assists him in the wheelchair. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Hundreds of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square on April 6, receiving him enthusiastically around 11:45 a.m. local time.
The pontiff said that “the sickbed can become a ‘holy place’ of salvation and redemption, both for the sick and for those who care for them.”
“I have much in common with you at this time of my life, dear brothers and sisters who are sick: the experience of illness, of weakness, of having to depend on others in so many things, and of needing their support,” the pope told his audience.
“This is not always easy, but it is a school in which we learn each day to love and to let ourselves be loved, without being demanding or pushing back, without regrets and without despair, but rather with gratitude to God and to our brothers and sisters for the kindness we receive, looking toward the future with acceptance and trust.”
The 88-year-old pontiff invited the faithful to contemplate the Israelites’ situation in exile, as Isaiah described. “It seemed that all was lost,” Francis noted, but added that it was precisely in this moment of trial that “a new people was being born.” He connected this biblical experience to the woman in the day’s Gospel reading who had been condemned and ostracized for her sins.
Her accusers, ready to cast the first stone, were halted by the quiet authority of Jesus, the pope’s homily explained.
Faithful gather in St. Peter’s Square for the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers on April 6, 2025, including religious sisters, medical professionals, and pilgrims from around the world. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
In comparing these stories, Pope Francis emphasized that God does not wait for our lives to be perfect before intervening.
“Illness is certainly one of the harshest and most difficult of life’s trials, when we experience in our own flesh our common human frailty. It can make us feel like the people in exile, or like the woman in the Gospel: deprived of hope for the future,” the pontiff’s homily said.
“Yet that is not the case. Even in these times, God does not leave us alone, and if we surrender our lives to him, precisely when our strength fails, we will be able to experience the consolation of his presence. By becoming man, he wanted to share our weakness in everything.”
Pope Francis thanked all health care workers for their service in a particularly moving passage: “Dear doctors, nurses, and health care workers, in caring for your patients, especially the most vulnerable among them, the Lord constantly affords you an opportunity to renew your lives through gratitude, mercy, and hope.”
The pontiff encouraged them to receive every patient as an opportunity to renew their sense of humanity. His words acknowledged the challenges facing medical workers, including inadequate working conditions and even instances of aggression against them.
Bringing his address to a close, the pontiff recalled the encyclical Spe Salvi of Pope Benedict XVI, who reminded the Church that “the true measure of humanity is determined in relation to suffering.” Francis warned, with the words of his predecessor, that “a society unable to accept its suffering members is a cruel and inhuman society.”
Archbishop Rino Fisichella incenses a statue of the Madonna and Child during the Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers at St. Peter’s Square, April 6, 2025. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
The Holy Father urged all present to resist the temptation to marginalize and forget the elderly, ill, or those weighed down by life’s hardships: “Dear friends, let us not exclude from our lives those who are frail, as at times, sadly, a certain mentality does today.”
‘I feel the finger of God’
In his brief Angelus remarks following the Mass, the pope shared his personal experience: “Dear friends, as during my hospitalization, even now in my convalescence I feel the ‘finger of God’ and experience his caring touch.”
The pope also called for prayers for all who suffer and for health care professionals, urging investment in necessary resources for care and research, so that health care systems may be inclusive and attend to the most fragile and poor.
Pope Francis concluded with a plea for peace in conflict zones, including Ukraine, Gaza, the Middle East, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and Haiti.
The Holy See has not yet commented on whether Pope Francis will participate in Holy Week ceremonies, with the Vatican press office indicating that “it is premature to discuss this” and assuring that further details will be provided later.
In a message for the Church’s Feb. 8 World Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking, the pope warns that conflict and inequality fuel exploitation. […]
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