VATICAN CITY, APRIL 13, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Church’s most urgent needs in the realm of youth pastoral care are the «permanent formation of pastoral care agents and creative programs,» says a Vatican official.
Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, expressed this conviction when he addressed the international congress on World Youth Days, which was held in Rome.
The pontifical council organized the event to reflect on last year’s World Youth Day in Toronto, and the next one to be held in Cologne in 2005.
The congress, which ended today, attracted 230 youth pastoral care directors from 80 countries and close to 50 movements, associations and communities.
«Thanks to WYD, a new generation of youths has grown, the so-called John Paul II generation, which needs new formators,» said Archbishop Rylko.
Youth pastoral care does not allow for «pauses in witnessing to Christ,» he said. «Whoever works with young people knows well how easy it is to disappoint them, and how little is needed to lose them.»
As a result, the World Youth Days challenge «pastoral care agents not so much to ‘do’ as to ‘be.'» The archbishop suggested that «fewer congresses might be in order and more prayer retreats to give our young people spiritual consistency.»
In this connection, the formation of pastoral care agents is «strategic, and youth pastoral care is the field on which the future of the Church is being decided,» he said.
Formators should have a «creative capacity,» since «routine is the enemy of pastoral care,» he added.
Archbishop Rylko also pointed out that all planning of pastoral care in view of Cologne’s World Youth Day must keep in mind «the primacy of grace, because evangelization and pastoral care are the work of grace, and the primacy of holiness, because its pursuit is also a priority in youth pastoral care.»
The archbishop added that the program should also consider «the primacy of the sacramental life — rediscover the Eucharist and reconciliation — and the primacy of the spirituality of communion — not antagonism but cooperation and distribution among ecclesial realities.»
