Francis spoke a day after hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month’s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States to demand tighter gun laws. He did not mention the demonstrations.
The 81-year-old Roman Catholic leader led a long and solemn Palm Sunday service before tens of thousands in St. Peter’s Square, many of them young people there for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth.
Carrying a woven palm branch known as a “palmurello,” Francis led a procession in front of the largest church in Christendom to commemorate the day the Bible says Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was hailed as a savior, only to be crucified five days later.
Drawing on biblical parallels, Francis urged the young people in the crowd not to let themselves be manipulated.
“The temptation to silence young people has always existed,” Francis said in the homily of a Mass.
“There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive,” he said. READ MORE
