Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Madrid (Agenzia Fides) - Madrid’s University Youth Mission began on Monday, March 3. Following the Mass presided by Bishop Cesar Franco, Auxiliary Bishop of Madrid, which also included a missionary “sending,” dozens of young people from various parishes, movements, and church organizations were dispersed, in small groups, among Madrid’s city bus-stops, cafes, university facilities, and high schools, inviting the people in the street to ask themselves the “transcendental questions.” The goal of the mission is to offer university students new ways of approaching the important life questions, such as “Are you there, God?” and “Isn’t a University meant to search for the truth?.” The most important of all will be the conversations that are begun with their university classmates on this day, to whom they will distribute a program of the activities that will be held during the University Youth Mission.
The University Youth Mission offers over 20 activities of all kinds, ranging from concerts and discussion groups to pilgrimages and workshops on how to converse with God. The Mission will take place from March 3 to May 29. The closing of this special insert within the Youth Mission (“Mision Joven”), will be lead by Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, who began the Mission last year. In his letter to the youth in September 2008, announcing the continuation of the Youth Mission, the Cardinal announced that the Mission, “that we began last year with such overwhelming apostolic spirit, will continue this year as well.” And it is precisely upon “the insistence of the youth missionaries themselves, who have requested this with a spiritual enthusiasm that has spread throughout the Church, that we have been compelled to do so,” as well as the “great pastoral encouragement we received from the Holy Father in that unforgettable audience on August 9, 2007 in Castelgandolfo.”
Bishop Cesar Franco reminded the missionaries that the university is “one of the contemporary areopagos where the truth of Christ should be proclaimed by the words and testimonies of believers.” And this is precisely what the university students have done on this opening day of the Mission. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 5/3/2008 righe 27, parole 347)
