Several priests then spoke. The Holy Father answered their questions on the topics of the education of youth, the role of Catholic schools, and the consecrated life as follows:

These questions are very practical and it is far from easy to come up with equally practical answers.

First of all, I should like to thank you for having called our attention to the need to attract young people to the Church; they are easily attracted instead by other things, by a way of life that is rather remote from our convictions.

The ancient Church chose the way of creating alternative living communities, not necessarily with ruptures. I would say, therefore, that it is important that young people discover the beauty of faith, that it is beautiful to have a direction, that it is beautiful to have God as a friend who can truly tell us the essential things of life.

This intellectual factor must then be accompanied by an emotional and social factor, that is, by socialization in faith; because faith can only be fulfilled if it also has a body, and this involves human beings in their way of life. In the past, therefore, when faith was crucial to community life, teaching catechism, which continues to be important today, would have sufficed.

However, given that social life has drifted away from faith - since all too often even families do not offer a socialization of faith - we must offer ways for a socialization of faith so that faith will form communities, offer vital spaces and convince people through a way of thought, affection and lively friendship.

It seems to me that these dimensions ought to go together, for the human person has a body and is a social being. In this sense, for example, it is wonderful to see so many parish priests here who have come with groups of young people to spend their holidays together. In this way, young people share the joy of their holiday period and live it together with God and the Church, in the person of their parish priest or parochial vicar. It seems to me, in Italy too, that the Church today offers alternatives and possibilities for socialization in which young people can walk together with Christ and shape the Church. This is why they must be guided by intelligent answers to the questions of our time: Is there still a need for God? Is it still reasonable to believe in God? Is Christ merely a figure in the history of religion or is he truly the Face of God that we all need? Can we live to the full without knowing Christ?

It is necessary to understand that building life and the future also requires patience and suffering. Nor can the Cross be lacking in young peoples' lives, and getting them to understand this is far from easy. The mountaineer knows that he must face sacrifices and train if climbing is to be a beautiful experience; so too, the young person must understand that for the ascent to life's future it is essential to exercise an interior life.

Consequently, personalization and socialization are the two approaches that must penetrate the actual situations of today's challenges: the challenge of affection and the challenge of communion. Indeed, these two dimensions make it possible to open oneself to the future and also to teach that the sometimes difficult God of faith is also for my own good in the future.

With regard to Catholic schools I can say that many Bishops who have come on their ad limina visit have frequently stressed their importance. The Catholic school, in situations such as in Africa, becomes an indispensable means of cultural advancement for the first steps to literacy and for raising the cultural standard in which a new culture is formed. Thanks to the Catholic school, it is also possible to confront the challenges of technology that strive for a pro-technological culture, destroying ancient forms of tribal life and their moral content.

Where we live the situation is different, but what I feel important is a general mental discipline that Christianity is not cut off from reality today, either.

As we said earlier, in the wake of the Enlightenment and of the "Second Enlightenment" in 1968, many thought that the historical time of the Church and faith was over and that they had entered a new epoch, when it would be possible to study these things as we study classical mythology.
On the contrary, it is vital to make people understand that faith is permanently up-to-date and perfectly reasonable. Hence, an intellectual assertion is called for that makes the beauty and organic structure of the faith comprehensible.

This was one of the fundamental intentions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which has now been condensed in the Compendium. We must not think of a pack of rules to be shouldered like a heavy backpack on our journey through life. In the end, faith is simple and rich: we believe that God exists, that God counts; but which God? A God with a face, a human face, a God who reconciles, who overcomes hatred and gives us the power of peace that no one else can give us. We must make people understand that Christianity is actually very simple and consequently very rich.

School is a cultural institution for intellectual and professional training: it is therefore necessary to make the organic and logical dimensions of the faith understood, in order to make known its important and essential elements for an understanding of what the Eucharist is, what happens on Sunday, and in Christian marriage. It is necessary, of course, to make people comprehend that nonetheless, the discipline of religion is not a purely intellectual and individualistic ideology, as perhaps happens in other disciplines: in mathematics, for example, I know how to do a specific calculation, but in the end other subjects have a practical tendency, a tendency to professionalism, to applicability in life. And so, it is necessary to understand that faith essentially creates assembly and unites.

It is precisely this essence of faith that liberates us from egoistic isolation and unites us in a great community, a very complete one - in parishes, in the Sunday gathering -, a universal community in which I become related to everyone in the world.

It is necessary to understand this Catholic dimension of the community that gathers in the parish church every Sunday. Thus, if, on the one hand, knowing the faith is one purpose, on the other, socializing in the Church or "ecclesializing" means being introduced into the great community of the Church, a living milieu, where I know that even in the important moments of my life - especially in suffering and in death - I am not alone.

Your Excellency said that many people do not seem to need us, but that the sick and the suffering do. And this should be understood from the outset: I will never again be lonely as long as I live. Faith redeems me from loneliness. I will always be supported by a community, but at the same time, I must support the community and, from the first, also teach responsibility for the sick, the lonely, the suffering, and thereby the gift that I make is reciprocated. So it is necessary to reawaken an awareness of this great gift in the person in whom is hidden the readiness to love and to give himself or herself, and thus guarantee that I too will have brothers and sisters to support me in difficult situations, when I am in need of a community that does not leave me stranded.

Regarding the importance of religious life, we know that the monastic and contemplative life are attractive in the face of the stress of this world. They appear like an oasis in which we can truly live. Here too, this is a romantic view: so the discernment of vocations is essential. However, it is the contemplative rather than the active Religious life which the historical situation endows with a certain attraction.

This is more visible in the male branch, where Religious and priests are to be seen carrying out an important apostolate in education, with the sick, etc. It is unfortunately less visible for female vocations where professionalism seems to make the religious vocation superfluous. There are qualified nurses and qualified school teachers, so that it no longer appears to be a religious vocation, and that specific activity will be difficult to resume once the chain of vocations is broken.

But we see more and more that the professionalism required in order to be a good nurse is not enough. The heart must be put into it. Love for the suffering person is necessary. This has a profound religious dimension. So does teaching. We now have new forms such as secular institutes, whose communities show by their lives that there is a way of life that is good for the person, but especially necessary for the religious community, for the faith and also for the human community. I therefore think that also by changing the form - many of our active female communities began in the 19th century with the specific social challenge of that period and today the challenges are a little different - the Church is making us understand that service to the suffering and the defence of life are vocations with a deep religious dimension and that there are forms [of Religious life] in which to live such vocations. So many new forms are springing up which make us hope that the Lord will grant the necessary vocations for the life of the Church and the world today.