Pope Francis celebrates Mass for young people Friday evening in Bangkok’s Cathedral. A strong faith based on a deep friendship with Jesus, he says, will see them through life’s difficulties, as their elders testify.
Pope Francis is asking the young people of Thailand to be deeply rooted and anchored in their faith by cultivating a friendship with Jesus, saying it will provide them with the oil needed to light up the path of their life and those of others around them.READ ALSO21/11/2019
“The Lord knows that through you, young people, the future is coming into this land and the world, and he is counting on you to carry out your mission today,” the Pope told the youth at a Mass in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Bangkok.He reflected on the day’s Gospel of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, saying it can happen to any Christian. “Full of excitement and interest,” he explained, “we hear the Lord’s call to be a part of His kingdom and share His joy with others.”
Pope in Thailand: Encounter and mutual dialogue needed in a challenging world
Pope Francis meets Christian leaders and leaders of other religions at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, telling them co-operation and mutual respect are needed more than ever in a world filled with complex challenges.
In 1897, Thailand’s King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) visited Rome and met Pope Leo XIII, the first time that a non-Christian Head of State was received in the Vatican. King Chulalongkorn’s vision, according to the University’s incumbent President, was to “provide higher education for students from all walks of life regardless of their gender, social status, ethnic or economic background, or religious faith”, and on that premise the university that bears his name was founded in 1917.Addressing Christian Leaders and Leaders of Other Religions atChulalongkorn University on Friday, Pope Francis said that this significant encounter between the monarch and Pope Leo challenges us, in our own time, “to pursue the path of dialogue and mutual understanding.” We need to do it, he added, “in a spirit of fraternal solidarity that can help end the many present-day forms of slavery, especially the scourge of human trafficking.”
Pope to Bishops in Thailand: Holy Spirit is the protagonist of mission
The Pope began his discourse to the Bishops by placing their meeting under the “watchful gaze” of Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd, “so that his example may inspire us with a great zeal for evangelization in all the local Churches of Asia.”Blessed Nicholas was sent as a missionary priest to northern Thailand in 1930 where he trained seminarians and worked to bring lapsed Catholics back to the faith. At a time of anti-Christian sentiment during World War II, he was arrested for “antipatriotic” acts and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He continued his missionary work there, baptizing 68 of his fellow prisoners. He died of tuberculosis in the prison hospital in 1944 at the age of 49.
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