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Three representatives from the world of youth also participate in the General Conference of the Churches in Asia, two from India and one from Malaysia. His impressions to : “A valuable opportunity in an open debate. The emerging challenges in our societies concern us in the first person. Looking at the present, not just the future.”
Bangkok () – “Everyone tells us that young people are the future, that we must have confidence in the future. But as Pope Francis explains in his apostolic exhortation Christus Vivit, we too are the present. And this is what we need to focus on. Because young people also grow old waiting for the future”.
Among the nearly 200 delegates from 29 countries of the Asian Catholic Churches gathered in Bangkok for the FABC General Conference, Ashita Jimmy is the youngest voice. Hailing from Madhya Pradesh, at the age of 18 he is participating in the work alongside bishops and cardinals from across the continent. As general secretary of the YCS, the association of Indian Catholic students, she is one of the three representatives of the world of youth that the Episcopal Conferences have convened to participate in this moment in which, for the first time, the Churches of Asia are trying , with a synodal modality, to trace a common path for the Catholic communities of a continent with a thousand faces.
The conference began on October 12 at the Baan Phu Waan Center of the Archdiocese of Bangkok and now enters its final stage. In the next few hours, a message will be disseminated to the peoples of Asia and on October 30, at the Cathedral of the Assumption, the closing celebration will take place presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, whom Pope Francis has sent as papal legate. . And it is precisely young people whom the Church in Asia today is called to look at with special attention.
Antony Judy, born in Kerala and president of the Indian Catholic Youth Movement, another of the young people participating in the Bangkok meeting, is convinced of that statement. “If we talk about migration – he comments – the majority of those who emigrate from Asia are young. If we talk about family, young people are involved in the first person. The female issue especially affects young people in Asia. Not to mention the ecological issue: our voice is not heard, but what is being destroyed is the planet on which we will live our lives. However, in this experience of the Church that is being lived in Bangkok, Antony sees a sign of hope: “The attention to listening that Pope Francis has recommended is making its way,” he comments. Here among the bishops I have heard very open and down-to-earth discussions. There is a strong desire to put yourself where people are. And the awareness that change is built by walking together”.
Josephine Magdalyn Tan, from the youth ministry of the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, also speaks of the desire that today’s young people have to play their rightful role in the Church of Asia. She talks about the difficulties that have been experienced in the Church due to the pandemic, but also how much it has made people discover the importance of caring for one another. To those who ask that the Church be more present on social networks, to be “where the young people are”, she replies that it is undoubtedly important that “many be inspired to evangelize through these tools as well”. She without losing, however, the awareness that they are an opportunity to reach people, “a starting point for a personal encounter with a community, which is what young people want.”
With one more step that he would like to help build: “Youth ministry – he explains – is by nature a transitory space: in our communities young people meet for the joy of being together and to discover their talents. Although today the real challenge is to understand that young people can offer more, to commit ourselves now in the first person in the evangelization of the environments in which we live every day and in service within society. But it is a path that is only possible if in the Church we learn to collaborate, really thinking things through together”.
