ASIA/PAKISTAN - Youth Ministry with the works of mercy

Monday, 2 May 2016 local churches   youth   year of mercy  

Lahore (Agenzia Fides) - "Young people need to be involved, to experience mercy and to give mercy. Thus the Jubilee makes sense for them": says to Fides Fr. Jahanzeb Iqbal, a priest from Lahore, pastor of St. Antony and Director of the Youth Ministry Service of the Archdiocese. With this spirit and this certainty Fr. Iqbal promotes, throughout the Jubilee year, a special program of events in which "young Catholics practice the works of mercy". Thanks to the initiative of Fr. Iqbal, young people regularly go to the hospitals in the poorest neighborhoods to visit families, are committed in the service of charity which prepares and distributes food to the marginalized and beggars. "One goes to celebrate Mass and bring joy in marginalized communities, and young people entertain children belonging to disadvantaged families" said the priest to Fides. "Mercy marks their lives and their experience and this makes mercy not an abstract word, but something extremely concrete: it is the closeness to every human suffering" he continues.
The Catholic youth of Lahore who, overall, are more than 50 thousand, come from 26 parishes of the Archdiocese, have welcomed these initiatives enthusiastically. Fr. Iqbal is organizing also the journey that will lead a delegation of Pakistani youth to WYD in Krakow, an event that young people look forward to.
"The priorities for young Pakistani Catholics is certainly education, especially very qualified education, since, once they finish high school, very few are able to pay college tuition costs, given the impossibility of their families" he explains. In addition, he concludes, one works for dialogue and peace, in order for citizens to be ready to build ties of harmony and reconciliation in society, especially with young Muslims. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 02/05/2016)


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