VATICAN CITY.- Pope Francis today asked future participants in World Youth Day (WYD), convened by the Catholic Church in Portugal earlier this year, to “open their hearts to other cultures.”
According to a statement released this Friday by the press office of the Holy See, Francis addressed a video message to the more than 400,000 young people who have so far submitted their requests to attend this meeting, which will take place between August 1 and 6 in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.
WYD is an appointment convened by the Pope and since 1985 34 editions have been held, the last ones in Italy (2000), Canada (2002), Germany (2005), Australia (2008), Spain (2011), Brazil (2013) , Poland (2016) and Panama (2019).
The next meeting was originally scheduled for August 2022, but amid the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Holy See reported in April 2020 that it had been decided to postpone it by a year “due to the current health situation and its implications for displacement”. .
“Learn to always look to the horizon, to always look further. Don’t build a wall in front of your life. The walls enclose you, the horizon lets you grow, above all do it with your heart”, stressed the Bishop of Rome in his admonition to the young participants of the WYD in Portugal.