In the young people, the strong message of Cardinal Bustillo to the French

Of our special envoy to Rome.

“You young people, you will surprise us”. Dressed in his Franciscan coat, relaxed and smiling, Cardinal Bustillo spoke with simplicity and frankness to the a few hundred pilgrims who came to listen to him this Friday, August 1 in Rome, on the occasion of the Jeunes Jubilee. “The young people of today are generous and altruistic,” launched the bishop of Ajaccio in the Saint-Louis-des-Français church full to crack. “

The young cardinal, appointed in 2023 by Pope Francis, surprised the pilgrims by focusing a good part of his words, entitled “Am I free for my vocation?” – No on the way of discerning your call but on the thirst for radicality of young people. “It was very true,” said Agnès, 23, however. From many, the bishop just touched. He pointed out the need for discipline and a demanding life felt by young people. “Young people do not want to lead mediocre lives, they want to find the salt of the Gospel,” he observed.

But “we must not confuse ideal and ideology”, alerted the bishop, who said he was worried about the rise of radicalisms. “The Church should not follow the profane areas,” he insisted. Sometimes the search for radicalism, which is good, turns to rigidity. Some young people engage in religious paths at the extreme requirement or attach too much importance to external means. Monsignor Bustillo denounced “naive messianism” which consists in thinking that “others do not understand anything, but I will save the church”.

To avoid this, “we, priests, bishops, have a duty to listen to the thirst for absolute young people today,” he said. “Some people say that young people today are hard, rigid, that they have a purist mentality. I think we must be provoked,” said the bishop before the attentive assembly, among which some priests and bishops were present.

Monsignor Bustillo made the link between the thirst for radicality of youth and the blandness of modern society. “I can understand that in a society without ideal there are passionate reactions,” he said. For him, May 68 gave way to a “soft” society which “does not fill it deep”. “We talk a lot about having it, knowledge, power, doing. But they do not fill the person,” analyzes the ecclesiastics. “Holiness is an answer to bland lives,” he said.

It is first made of love. “The goal of any vocation is to love,” he said. Beyond the search for radicality, “if we answer a vocation it is to live it in joy and transmit joy”, insisted the cardinal. “The life of the baptized is not oriented towards production but towards fertility”, allowed by “health and joy”, he had already recalled in the introduction, deploring confusion “between doing it and being”. “The vocations respond to the thirst for joy and happiness. Dear young people, discover your vocation and answer it to give a soul to our world,” concluded Monseigneur Bustillo.

The current went well between young people and the priest with direct and modest personality. “His way of being attracted me”, “he spoke very well to young people”, confide Matthias and Alban, two young people aged 18, at the end of the church. The bishop has shown that the church should be challenged by young people and their new thirst for requirement and radicality. He spoke to them firmly and enthusiasm, ensuring that they were going to “give the best of themselves and transform the church”. He also told them that they will be “spiritual guides” for their contemporaries in search of meaning. “He has confidence in young people,” appreciates Augustin, 20.