Pope Benedict XVI opened a Rome diocesan conference with a call to restore a sense of Christian hope to the city's inhabitants and institutions.That includes making the city more workable and a safer place to live for all residents, including immigrants, he said.
The pope spoke June 9 in a packed Basilica of St. John Lateran, the city's cathedral, at the opening of a four-day encounter on what church officials have termed the "educative emergency" among young people in Rome.
The pope acknowledged the malaise that has affected Italy and other parts of Europe in recent months, saying many people have the feeling that the best days are past and that "the future holds only uncertainty and instability for younger generations."
It would be a mistake to think that science and technology hold the answers to all the problems besetting society today, he said. In order to give meaning to lives, Christian faith and hope are needed, he added.
Pope Benedict entrusted to young Catholics in particular the task of bringing back a sense of hope to the city of Rome.
The pope also touched on the sensitive issue of crime. Immigrant communities in Rome and throughout Italy have been blamed for a rise in criminal offenses, and in recent weeks officials have led several raids on immigrant communities in a move to expel illegal residents.
The pope said the church shares "the commitment to making our city more safe and livable for all people, including the poorest."
But he said it was also important "not to exclude the immigrant who comes among us in order to find a space for living, in respect of our laws."
The pope said that, in general, the city needs to make daily life less difficult for its residents. Especially needed, he said, are a culture and a social network that are more favorable to families and that take care of the elderly.
He said Rome, in many ways a quintessentially Christian city, is afflicted by the same "weakness of hope" that is characteristic of much of modern society.
Although Rome would be unrecognizable without reference to Jesus, its residents today "tend too often to place God in parentheses, to organize their personal and social life without God, and to think that nothing can be known of God, or even negate his existence," he said.
In order to change that, he said, the city's Christians must open their hearts and minds to God and be "credible witnesses" of the Gospel in society.
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