Vatican investigators meet Peru prelate accused of land trafficking

As part of their ongoing probe into a scandal-plagued lay group in Peru, the Vatican’s top investigating duo has met with a Peruvian archbishop accused of land trafficking, as well as a group of peasants his community is alleged to have harassed.

Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Spanish Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu are currently in Lima, Peru, conducting an investigation into the Sodalitium Christinae Vitae (SCV), a society of apostolic life founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in the 1970s.

Though allegations were made several years prior, scandals involving the SCV exploded in 2015, when Peruvian journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz published their book Half Monks, Half Soldiers detailing years of alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by members of the SCV.

Figari himself was accused of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse within the community, including against minors. He was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2017 and prohibited from having further contact with members of the group, and he is currently living in exile.

After years of attempted reform efforts which victims and former members of the group charge have been largely useless, Pope Francis sent Scicluna and Bertomeu, widely considered to be the Vatican’s most competent investigators, to look into the SCV.

As part of their inquiries, Scicluna and Bertomeu Thursday met with a group of peasant farmers from the San Juan Bautista of Catacaos rural community in Piura, who have accused various organizations and associations affiliated with the SCV of legal harassment and the dispossession of ancestral lands for the sake of profit.

They were joined by Jennie Dador, executive secretary of the National Coordinator of Human Rights (CNDDHH) in Peru.

Later that day, Scicluna and Bertomeu met with Archbishop José Antonio Eguren Anselmi of Piura, Peru, who is a prominent member of the SCV and who has been accused of land trafficking in Piura, including the land belonging to the Catacaos community.

Eguren also infamously slapped both Salinas and Ugaz with criminal defamation suits related to their reporting, but later retracted that after facing public backlash and pressure from the rest of the Peruvian Church hierarchy.

(In the Peruvian system, private citizens can register a criminal complaint for defamation.)

He filed the lawsuits against Salinas and Ugaz in July 2018, just three years after the publication of their 2015 book, taking issue with investigative reports in which they named him as not only complicit in the SCV’s abuses and coverup efforts, but also land trafficking.

Pope Francis met Eguren, who has presided over the Archdiocese of Piura since 2006, in a private audience at the Vatican in September 2018. The Vatican never disclosed the nature of the meeting, but it is widely believed that his criminal suits against Salinas and Ugaz were at least part of the motivation behind it.

A year later, shortly after winning his case against Salinas, which was tried in Piura, Eguren retracted his complaints against both Salinas and Ugaz amid an avalanche of public, media, and ecclesial criticism, including a statement from the Peruvian bishops condemning his actions and in which they claimed to have the pope’s backing.

Eguren met Pope Francis at the Vatican in March 2022, as Ugaz was publishing further reports on land trafficking in the Piura area by organizations associated with the SCV.

Despite the fact that Eguren dropped his case against Ugaz, who is preparing a book detailing alleged financial misdeeds within the SCV, she has continued to receive legal notices from individuals with ties to the SCV, most of whom accuse her of defamation.

One case against her, which accused her of money laundering and bribery, was recently tossed out by judicial authorities, who said the allegations were baseless.

Among the items cited in Eguren’s original complaint against Ugaz were her allegations of criminal activity in the purchase of a large patch of land in Piura by the San Juan Bautista Civil Association and involvement with the criminal group La Gran Cruz in the process.

For years, a legal battle has been unfolding in Piura between a group of farmers and a handful of companies either operated by or with ties to the SCV, including the San Juan Bautista Civil Association, the Empresa Agrícola Santa Regina SAC, and the Inversiones San Jose.

In Peru and throughout much of Latin America, it is common for peasants and members of the poorer classes to establish roots on a piece of inexpensive land and live there undisturbed for decades, or even hundreds of years, while having no formal title to the land on which they live, usually due to a lack of money or legal support.

Often, companies who want to buy up the land will strike a deal with the titleholder and essentially run the inhabitants out of town through threats and, at times, violence carried out by criminal groups.

In the province of Piura, one of these communities is a group of farmers in the town of Catacaos who are battling both threats from criminal groups and legal suits by companies of the SCV who wish to buy up the land they occupy.

Since 2012, leaders of the Catacaos community have been complaining about harassment and violence from companies associated with the SCV.

Given the authority he holds in the region and within the SCV, Eguren has been at the center of many of the accusations and has been accused of being an architect of various schemes to oust the farmers from their land.

Ugaz previously told Crux that one of the leaders of the Catacaos community, Marcelino Ynga, was fighting a legal battle launched by organizations tied to the SCV in which he was called a terrorist and accused of criminal intent.

Further legal complaints have been filed by the SCV-affiliated organizations against an additional 12-13 members of Ynga’s community, and there are around 20 such cases in total in Piura. Once the businesses acquire the land they are seeking, they allow other companies to use it for economic activities.

In her book on SCV finances, the publication of which has repeatedly been delayed due to the ounslaught of legal complaints against her, Ugaz charges that a company with ties to the SCV purchased a cemetery plot in Piura.

In the purchase, she said, the SCV-affiliated company wrote it off as a donation to the archdiocese of Piura but remained the legal managers of the property, thus securing the lower tax rate that comes with being a property of the Catholic Church, while reaping the profits.

Scicluna and Bertomeu met with six members of the Catacaos farming community at the nunciature in Peru Thursday morning, hearing their account of what they claim are violations against their fundamental rights and efforts to dispossess them of their ancestral lands.

Eguren arrived later that afternoon to provide his own account of the situation.

On Wednesday, a day prior, Scicluna and Bertomeu met with a second SCV bishop, Kay Schmalhausen, who in 2021 stepped down from his post in Ayaviri to care for his ailing mother.

In the past, Schmalhausen, who left the SCV in 2018, at the same time Eguren’s lawsuits against Salinas and Ugaz were being carried forward, has called for the perpetrators of both sexual abuse and coverup to be excommunicated.

The closure of the Franciscan Friary in Athlone is symptomatic of the wider loss of religion in Ireland (Opinion)

In recent years, Ireland has seen religious orders close community houses across the country due to lack of vocations. 

These closures are normally accompanied with brief news articles with local people expressing sadness, but few others in the wider public take notice of the impact. 

As an archivist, before Christmas I had the sad task of helping to close the Franciscan Friary in Athlone, Co Westmeath. 

Set upon the banks of Ireland’s biggest river, the River Shannon, Athlone is a small town of 20,000, in a part of Ireland that is less populated and left behind both economically and infrastructurally. 

It lies about 12 miles from the ruins of the important monastery of Clonmacnoise, founded by St Ciarán. Historically a key military base, Athlone is now trying to regenerate itself. 

However, in contrast to the larger cities, life feels more natural and less stressed in Athlone, the birthplace of the famed Irish tenor Count John McCormack.

Arriving in the town around 1235, the Franciscans moved location several times over the centuries. 

During the times of the Penal Laws, they served as the parish clergy for the Diocese of Clonmacnoise when the priests were evading capture. 

During the height of the persecution, the friars were forced to live and minister the Sacraments in secret in the countryside. 

They survived imprisonment, transportation and death in some cases to keep their presence and the Catholic faith alive in the town. In the early 1700s, they eventually arrived at the location in Athlone they would stay in for about 300 years. 

The current church was opened in 1932, originally dedicated to the “Four Masters” who began their influential Annals in 1628 in Athlone, but later rededicated to St Anthony of Padua.

Built only eight years after the foundation of the Irish Free State, in many ways St Anthony’s is a physical manifestation of the new state. 

The Romanesque interior of the church contains five beautiful stained glass windows from the iconic Harry Clarke Studios, while the exterior harks back to the golden age of Celtic Christianity of nearby Clonmacnoise with its round tower belfry and Celtic cross. 

The money, raised since 1919, built an impressive church that was representative of the local community’s pride in its faith and heritage, having undergone centuries of suppression. 

Over the course of the following century, the friars of St Anthony’s humbly served the spiritual needs of Athlone, while also serving as a House of Formation for the Franciscans in Ireland for many years.

From a religious level, the departure of the Franciscans will be a severe blow to the people from Athlone and neighbouring areas. Sizeable numbers also travelled lengthy distances daily to the friary for the Sacrament of Confession. 

The already overstretched secular clergy in Athlone will now have an even greater load of duties to carry. 

While practising Catholics will still be able to attend Mass elsewhere, and the Church has been kept running in the short term, the parish has lost part of its identity and the town has lost part of its living heritage. 

In more tangible losses, the Third Order Franciscans in St Anthony’s has no place to meet, anda local support group had to find a new location for their meetings.

On January 8, 2023, the Franciscans left Athlone after a presence of almost 800 years. During my weeks in Athlone, several questions sprang to mind that don’t have straightforward answers. 

What happens to a town once a vital part of it, for centuries, leaves? Surely the loss manifests itself in more than just immediate sorrow of affected parishioners. 

Spiritually, there will be fewer sacraments readily available; fewer Masses offered daily for the local community and the souls of parishioners. 

The loss of witness to the religious life will make vocations an even obscurer option. 

Societally, what damage will it do to a town like Athlone losing the Franciscans? 

The loss of parish life will reduce the level of social capital in the town. The local community could further fragment. Given the very positive reputation of the Franciscans in Athlone, it will be an even tougher challenge now for the Church to rebuild credibility.

Nationally, the departure of the Franciscans from Athlone begs further questions. St Anthony’s Church symbolises the Ireland that was fought for during the War of Independence: a proudly Gaelic and Catholic nation. 

But in the decades since independence, the Irish language has languished in contrast to the revival in the Welsh language. 

With the exception of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Ireland has left its Gaelic roots to wither while it consumes American or British media, sport, culture and politics. 

The Catholic Church in Ireland will face serious problems in the next five years, including the imminent collapse in the numbers of active priests, declining (dying) weekly Mass-goers, numerous empty Churches, few vocations to the priesthood, aggressively hostile national media, an uneducated laity and a thoroughly secularised, individualistic culture. 

While on a local and personal level there is still very positive goodwill towards religious, nationally and among young people there is antipathy. 

The Church is utterly irrelevant to the lives of most young people and only relevant when there is a national scandal. When Pope Francis visited Ireland in 2018, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke of a new relationship between Church and state. It remains to be seen whether that new relationship will allow Catholics to freely live and express their faith.

Getting to spend time with these humble friars who devoted decades of loyal service to Christ was a privilege. Their witness makes it clear how shallow and selfish modern Ireland is. 

Speaking to local people in Athlone during my stay, believer and nonbeliever immediately expressed sorrow for the loss of the friars. Although the sadness of parishioners was palpable, there was also a deep gratitude for the immeasurable good and centuries of service they brought to Athlone. 

While this is likely to become a more regular occurrence in the coming years, unless it happens to them, few will reflect long on how this will affect the communities left behind. While St Anthony’s closing could be a symptom of a Church in decline, the profound negative impacts suffered by the parish and community shouldn’t be forgotten.

As numbers of the faithful in Ireland shrink, some will be tempted towards despair and conclude that the Church in Ireland is destined to become like the ruins in Clonmacnoise. 

In 1969, the then Fr Joseph Ratzinger prophetically described the Church of the future, now quickly becoming a reality in Ireland, a smaller Church but filled with those dedicated with the “pure fullness of their faith”. 

Modern man pursuing hedonistic lives devoid of meaning will, please God, find Pope Benedict’s words fulfilled in the future. 

“If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching for in secret.”

The Church in Ireland will survive in some form. 

Men and women will then emerge as the new Jongleurs de Dieu and, like St Francis of Assisi, will answer the call of God to go and repair His Church stone by stone.

Sinéad O’Connor was failed by the Church (Opinion)

In October 1996 I found myself in a seminar group with Sinéad O’Connor. 

My name then was O’Neill and the alphabet had lumped us together long before any other identity group had a chance to.  

I was looking forward to hearing what she had to contribute and not at all dreaming about shaving my head, becoming her best friend and meeting Prince, but I never saw her again after that first week. 

Like so many times before and since, the ever-restless heart changed route.  

I never kept up with her work, but from time to time I would read about something shocking she had said or done.  She frequently spoke out on issues of rights, racism, child abuse, religion and feminism, and she was clearly a deeply damaged, troubled person desperately seeking stability and truth.  

If it was Galilee circa 31AD she would have recognised truth and found the rest that she so rightly longed for.  

But she was unable to recognise that which is “the same yesterday, today and forever” in the short span of time between 8 December 1966 and 26 July 2023.  

That Christ was not clearly revealed to her through the Church which He established is something that should give us pause.  After being ordained a fake priest in 1999, O’Connor (still restless) moved on again and converted to Islam, calling it, “The natural conclusion of any intelligent theologians’ journey.”

But O’Connor was not an intelligent theologian. Her ignorance of Catholicism was staggering, and she had been badly let down by those tasked with feeding the sheep. 

She was a woman crying out in agony and hearing no adequate response from the Church of her cradle, a failing which Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of as he reflected on Jesus’ own agony:

“…Think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church. How often the holy sacrament of his Presence is abused…how often we celebrate only ourselves, without even realising that he is there. How often his Word is twisted and misused. What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words. How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him. How much pride, how much self-complacency?”

What O’Connor lived through was the worst of both worlds in the Church: on the one hand a loveless legalism experienced as a rejection of sin and sinner, and on the other a false compassion welcoming both. The pendulum smacked her in the face wherever she stood.   It’s no wonder she couldn’t recognise truth. I’m surprised she could stand up. 

There are many people like this: broken, hurt, damaged, their relationship with God ruined by the very people charged with safeguarding it.  The ripples are far reaching, and it is hard to know what our response should be, the response of those still clinging to the ark. 

There is a temptation to jump off, swim away and join these poor damaged people out in the depths.  The thing is that they will drown there, and we will drown with them. 

Hard as it seems when we are faced with pain, trauma and confusion in our own families, or in the families of those we meet along the way, we need to call them back, throw out a life jacket and keep them safe.  

We need to reassure them that the ark is the only place to be and bring them in deep, past the drunken sailors on the outside, past those who have fallen asleep at their post, past the lies of those saying, “luxury yachts this way”.  

We need to draw them deep enough that they see the face of Christ, but we cannot do this if we have not ourselves encountered Him.

This is a journey that Pope Benedict XVI shares in Jesus of Nazareth which he describes as “an expression of my personal search for the face of the Lord”.

It seemed to me that Sinead O’Connor spent her life searching for love, but was only ever deceived by a counterfeit. False love, false compassion, will appease, will leave people where they are and let them drown.  

It is a comfortable lie, easy to say, easy to hear and easy to accept.  

Real love is a challenging truth; difficult to speak, difficult to hear and difficult to accept in our fallen world, but the end of one is death and the end of the other is life. 

In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness”.

Sinéad O’Connor was made for a greatness which we all glimpsed in the beauty of her face and voice, but the soil was shallow and when the sun came up she withered without root. 

Eternal rest grant unto her O lord and let perpetual light shine upon her and her son.

Enoch Burke case: the unanswered questions (Opinion)

Irish schoolteacher Enoch Burke has been ordered to pay costs to Wilson’s Hospital Secondary School after the High Court determined that the school was within its rights to put him on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a disciplinary process against him. 

Burke was famously suspended from his post by his employer for disruptive behaviour following an instruction from the Principal of the school to address a pupil by the pronouns “them/they”. 

Burke objected to this instruction on the grounds of religious freedom.  

Since that time, he has lost his job and been incarcerated for contempt of court for 108 days after refusing to commit to not abiding by his suspension and attending his place of work. 

After this, his punishment changed from jail time to a fine of €700 per day, effective since January until school closed for summer holidays. This amounted to approximately €50,000 in fines.  

In May 2023 High Court Judge Alexander Owens awarded damages of  €15,000 to the school for Burke’s trespass on the school grounds while suspended and dismissed, and more recently determined that Burke must pay the legal costs of the school as well – potentially approaching six-figures.  

“The normal rule is that the costs follow the event. There has to be exceptional reasons to depart from that,” the judge said, unpersuaded by Burke’s arguments (Burke was representing himself) that the initial trial was one-sided.  

Burke reiterated his unchanging position that the case was about religious belief and freedom of conscience. He told the judge he had “exalted religious belief to the most serious of crimes” when he issued his original judgement against Burke.  

“These proceedings have been initiated against me because I took a stand on my religious belief, I stand by my actions in speaking up, and for the court to now ask me to pay something is punishing me for that religious belief.” 

While the judge refused to get drawn into this discussion, the matter of whether the school was acting within its rights when Burke was compelled to refer to the student by preferred pronouns that are at odds with their biological sex has yet to be answered. 

Whether religious belief ought to trump or submit to preferred gender identity is also an outstanding question which is central to the case.  

Supporters of the school, and some sympathetic to Burke, argue, as the judge has, that the issue in question in simply Burke’s behaviour that led to his suspension and dismissal, as well as the behaviour that led to him being deemed in contempt of court.

The same argument is made that Burke’s engagement in court, which Judge Owens most recently considered “not to persuade but simply to harangue”, has contributed to him losing each case that has arisen in the process, and ultimately contributed to the underlying – substantive – issue remaining unaddressed in the courts. 

As it stands, no one knows whether the School acted within its rights in instructing Burke to speak in a particular way, or whether Burke was right in complaining that it was an illegitimate demand. 

There are other complications in the case, such as whether the student’s parents were informed of their request, or whether the instruction from the school was more of a request – but the primary issue remains unanswered.  

As it stands, until the substantive issue is addressed, it may be a case that Burke has spent more than three months in prison and been driven to bankruptcy for not agreeing to submit to an illegitimate request that trampled on his religious beliefs.  

For other teachers, the chilling effect is to warn them that they need to comply or submit to being placed on administrative leave, in the event of a similar request. 

Schools and teachers, as well as parents and students, are forced to make decisions in the absence of guidance from the State. 

The result is not just uncertainty for teachers as to what their rights are, but uncertainty for schools as to what is the best response for students who are identifying as gender non-conforming. 

Debbie Hayton, writing in the Spectator, comments on the delays in the Department of Education in issuing guidance on transgenderism in schools.  

The result of the absence of any guidance is highlighted in the Policy Exchange report earlier this year: Asleep at the Wheel, An examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools. 

The report shows that while many schools were “asleep at the wheel”, failing to inform parents (as seems to be the case in Wilson’s Hospital School), others were actively getting ahead of the law, taking advice from activist organisations such as Stonewall or Mermaids, and sometimes stepping outside the law, for example, by removing single sex toilets.  

In Ireland, there is no such guidance being prepared, let alone any official discussion about such guidance. The dangers  and risks of gender affirmation in teens, with or without parental consent, is a subject that officials in Ireland does not wish to discuss.

Reports such as that by Dr Hilary Cass, investigations such as Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes, analysis by Irish author Helen Joyce in Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality seem to be on the index of forbidden books, receiving little coverage or none.  

Meanwhile, the Department of Education continues apace with reform of the Social Personal and Health Education Curriculum (SPHE), which includes Relationship & Sexuality Education, the draft for senior cycle which Iona Institute Director, David Quinn, described as “like something dreamt up by the most radical US sociology departments”.  

The draft curriculum, with an outsized focus on “gender studies’” supported by “learning” materials from activists groups, all but endorses a gender affirmative approach, absent of any guidance on the real and potentially negative consequences, or any clarity for teachers, schools or students on the issue Enoch Burke lost his job over.

Pope Francis heads to Lisbon to hear ‘untamed’ voice of youth at WYD

As Pope Francis readies himself to visit Portugal to preside over World Youth Day (WYD), one of the largest global gatherings of young people in the world, akin more to a rock concert than a an event of prayerful reflection, one of his primary goals will be not just to send a message, but to listen. 

For Pope Francis, young people are not simply a priority, as if they are an agenda item that needs forcing or has to be added to a list, but rather they are an integral part of his vision because “they have a contribution to give today, they have a contribution in understanding reality,” said Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ. 

Speaking to the Catholic Herald, Fr Spadaro said Pope Francis’s goal, especially as he heads to WYD, “is to hear the voice of young people, to hear what young people have to say about the church, about reality, about the world. Voices that are not necessarily ‘tamed.’”

He recalled how during the 2018 Synod of Bishops on young people, youth were present who belonged to different faith traditions, or none at all, along with ardent Catholics, and that together these youths reflected on major current issues for the Church and the world. 

“The Pope wants spaces in which the Church reflects on itself and its role in the world, where you listen a lot and where the tensions and worries of young people are also heard, because they are especially important in interpreting the present,” Fr Spadaro said. 

Set to take place in Lisbon from August 1-6, this year’s international World Youth Day gathering holds the theme, “Mary arose and went in haste.” Pope Francis will travel to Portugal to participate in the event, which is expected to draw a crowd of roughly one million, including those belonging to other faith traditions. 

After his election to the papacy just over 10 years ago, Pope Francis’s first international trip, and first major global event, was the WYD gathering in Rio de Janiero in July 2013, which had been scheduled by his predecessor Benedict XVI, but which Francis took over after Benedict’s resignation earlier that year. 

For many, WYD in 2013 was their introduction to the new Argentine pope, and for Fr Spadaro, it was noteworthy that Pope Francis’s pontificate “began so openly with a trip, and it was World Youth Day.”

“What moved me was his desire to communicate; more than giving speeches, which he did, he had a conversation with questions and answers, he had an interaction,” Fr Spadaro said, saying Pope Francis’s frank and interactive way of communicating and relating (especially to young people) was striking, and is something that has become a characteristic aspect of his papacy. 

Another important aspect of Pope Francis’s relationship with young people, Fr Spadaro said, is that he “never sees them as an isolated category, as a category aside, a faction of the People of God.” Rather, he views young people within the framework of “fundamental relationships with other generations.”

Pope Francis has made intergenerational ties a hallmark of his papacy, often urging young people to spend time with their grandparents or to reach out to elderly people in their area. 

Fr Spadaro said he has always been impressed with Pope Francis’s insistence that “the elderly have dreams and the youth can have a vision for the future,” as people usually tend to think the opposite. 

He recalled how the Pope, in his first private Mass with members of the Jesuits – which happened during WYD in Rio – insisted that the event was not “the exaltation of youth as youth,” but an occasion to highlight “how young people are in close relationship with all other generations, especially the generation of the elderly”.

For the Pope, young people “are not the future of the church, but the present,” Fr Spadaro said. 

St John Paul II instituted WYD in 1985 as a way to reach out to young people and engage them in church life. The first international WYD event was held in Rome in 1985, and while observed annually at the local level, major international gatherings have taken place in different cities around the world every three years or so since.

According to Cardinal Manuel Clemente, the Patriarch of Lisbon, the choice to hold WYD in Portugal this year is indicative of Francis’s affinity for the country, which will soon have six cardinals with the recent nomination of the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon, Américo Aguiar – who will receive his red hat in the upcoming September 30 consistory. 

That is a relatively high number of cardinals in respect to the country’s Catholic population; countries like Mexico or Brazil with much higher numbers of Catholics have proportionally many fewer members of the Sacred College. 

“In recent years, there have been two occasions here in Portugal that are important not only for Portugal, but for the Church,” Cardinal Clemente told journalists during a media roundtable on WYD. 

The first of these events was the centenary of the famed Fátima apparitions in 2017, and the second is WYD and the preparations it has involved, he said, saying these events have given Pope Francis a broad glimpse of the Portuguese church and its pastors. 

After visiting Fátima for the 2017 centenary anniversary, during which he canonized two of the children to whom the Virgin Mary appeared, Francis named the bishop of Leiria-Fátima, António dos Santos Marto, a cardinal. Now, ahead of his second visit to Portugal for WYD, he has given a red hat to Bishop Aguiar.

Cardinal Clemente said the Pope’s attention to Portugal, including his choices of cardinals, is “important for us and also for the church.”

In terms of Pope Francis’s schedule, Cardinal Clemente said local church authorities are working hard with the help of thousands of volunteers “to make it the best” experience possible for those who attend. “We want to open to everyone with great joy,” he said. 

After arriving on August 2, Pope Francis will meet separately with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Prime Minister António Costa, as well as with representatives of the civil authorities and the diplomatic corps. He will also meet with the country’s bishops, priests, religious and seminarians.

He is scheduled to meet with university students and youth belonging to the Scholas Occurentes organization prior to inaugurating WYD at its official opening session on August 3. The following day he will spend roughly half an hour hearing the confessions of young people before meeting with charity workers. He will then have lunch with a group of around 10 youths from different countries and in the afternoon will preside over the traditional WYD Via Crucis.

He will visit Fátima on Friday, August 5, where he will pray the Rosary with young people who are sick, after which he will return to Lisbon and in the afternoon will meet privately with members of the Jesuits in Portugal before presiding over the WYD prayer vigil.

On August 6, his final day in Fátima, Pope Francis will celebrate the closing Mass for WYD and will meet with volunteers assisting with the event before returning to Rome that evening.

According to Cardinal Clemente, the most important aspect of the event will be the Pope, whose presence is not only important for Lisbon, but for all those who attend. It will be a moment “that will leave them happy because of his presence,” he said. 

Speaking of the Pope’s attention to the youth, Fr Spadaro said he is moved by the fact that often when Pope Francis meets with young people, “he has a pen in front of him. On several occasions I’ve noticed him taking notes.”

Even though a prepared speech had been written beforehand, “he opens a door, a door of communication,” which doesn’t necessarily involve tossing his speech aside, but “much more often it involves integrating it and perceiving the answers of the youth,” he said. 

“The questions that youth have are known beforehand and are often prepared, but for the Pope,” while the prepared questions are a source of reflection, “he feels like he must – looking at the person in the face, looking at young people face to face – enter into a dialogue and into a relationship,” Fr Spadaro said. 

Children often ask questions that are hard to answer, so engaging these questions requires “an openness of heart,” he said. “This is something the Pope is very sensitive to, the freshness of the attitude of young people to be restless, to be uneasy. He feels the need to respond to this restlessness.”

“He feels an immediateness, a freshness, a restlessness, to which he feels like he must respond also by tossing his speech, or interjecting,” Fr Spadaro said, insisting that “it’s not so much tossing the speech, not so much a theoretical need, it’s a need of a relationship: if you have in front of a person you need to look at in the face, you need to respond to their question directly. This is it.”

In terms of what message Pope Francis might give during WYD, Fr Spadaro said that more than sending a message, the Pope wants to listen. 

“He feels that the testimony and participation of young people is important… young people have a particular way [of seeing the world] that must absolutely be heard” in an unfiltered way, he said.