Pope Francis kicked off Holy Week with a solemn service on Palm Sunday in St. Peter's Square, urging young people to keep shouting, the New York Post reported.
The pontiff spoke in front of a crowd that included young people who were in attendance for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth.
Francis told youths not to allow the older generations to silence them, the Post reported.
“The temptation to silence young people has always existed,” the pope 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. “Dear young people, you have it in you to shout. It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: Will you cry out?”
The young people in the crowd shouted, “Yes!”
Francis, 81, spoke a day after the March for Our Lives worldwide rally, in which hundreds of thousands of supporters called for tighter gun laws. The pontiff did not mention the rally by name, the Post reported.
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