{"id":23232,"date":"2026-09-17T10:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/di-che-cosa-hanno-bisogno-i-giovani\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T10:10:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:10:35","slug":"what-do-young-people-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/what-do-young-people-need\/","title":{"rendered":"What do young people need"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cover<\/picture>
Games on the beach during a gathering for young people of the parish Blessed Pedro Bonilli in Santiago, Chile (December, 2019).\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n


\u201cWhy didn\u2019t anyone ever tell me these things?\u201d. I remember well this question that was asked to me a few years back, while I found myself in the class of a technical school speaking about the figure of the father in literature. Red hair, eye shadow and a nose piercing: I had barely even entered the classroom and already the look of this girl had expressed a certain hostility towards me. Perhaps the garb of a priest seemed to her to be a provocation. And yet, the topic had aroused an initial interest. Little by little, questions were raised so much that, at the sound of the bell, no one got up and we continued for almost all of the next hour to speak. The dialogue became increasingly urgent: how is it possible to become a priest? How is it possible to freely give up having a woman? Can there really be a love that does not betray? As they pressed on with their questions, I began to ask what handhold could my words find in these young people who were so distant from me. With a bit of fear, I accepted to risk, to bare myself, to cast off that false modesty that is really just a justification to retreat from the other. And so I saw their defenses lower to the point when the aforementioned girl, with bright eyes, launched me that final, tender accusation: \u201cWhy has no one ever told me these things?\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Young people ask us to look at their secret beauty, to help them bring it to light<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I do not know the suffering from which that question was born and I do not know if our dialogue then changed something in her. However, I carry those eyes with me because they reveal the true face of the young people I continue to encounter. Behind the shell of apparent indifferent or brazen provocation, an incandescent heart beats, in which live together an almost violent impetus for life and a profound fragility. This delicate beauty often does not know how to find the paths to bloom and so it risks being extinguished in disillusion, frustration, rage or in the many anesthetics that today are widely available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My life changed when my turbulent youth crossed paths with adults, mentors, and fathers. People who were able to see something in me that even I couldn\u2019t yet see\u2014but which, at the same time, I sensed and longed for. People who took the risk of telling me what made their lives meaningful, what it meant to love truly, and what lies I was trying to tell myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer I went for a walk among the marble quarries of Carrara. There, among those large, still-shapeless blocks of marble, Michelangelo had wandered five hundred years ago. He could glimpse the veins from the outside; he sensed the hidden masterpiece waiting to be unleashed from the bare rock. Marble is hard, resistant to shaping; it requires effort. Most of the material must be chiseled away, and this art is extremely risky: in an instant, everything can crack and shatter. So too, young people ask us to look at their secret beauty, to help them bring it to light even if it might hurt, to remind them that life is a battle worth fighting. Dante needs Virgil to embark on the journey that will lead him to Beatrice. With a mentor, we can even go through hell to rediscover the luminous and authentic face of what we love, even if it has caused us suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When one has a father, the entire world becomes a home. In the house in which God dwells, one discovers the companionship of many brothers, the beauty of true relationships. And so, the solitude and the fear that can grip the heart can be defeated. One can still choose to go their own way, for an instant or forever. And yet, no seed will remain without fruit if only by leaving an incurable nostalgia. I have seen young people explode with life and enthusiasm thanks to their encounter with Christ, I have seen them drag their own friends along, arriving to make definitive decisions and becoming, in their turn, parents too. The Church can always be born and enrich herself with new saints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what do young people need? They need adults who have not given up on proclaiming that Christ is the only true reason for living, the only one who can restore true depth to relationships, the only one who can make even sacrifice bearable; people who are not afraid of their own ironic and clumsy attempts and are not held hostage by the fear of making mistakes, but who sincerely engage with them; people who know they belong to a community greater than themselves, who look at them with the esteem and affection they themselves once experienced and which, even today, sustain them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More and more, adults are asked to be teachers, to testify to Christ as \u201cthe only true reason for living.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"What do young people need - Fraternity of St. Charles","description":"More and more, adults are asked to be teachers, to testify to Christ as \u201cthe only true reason for living.\u201d"},"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":374,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":522,"_slim_seo_primary_term_writers":569,"_slim_seo_primary_term_regions":385,"_slim_seo_primary_term_cities":437,"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[522,1258],"writers":[569],"regions":[385],"cities":[437],"class_list":["post-23232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-educazione-en","tag-paternita-en","writers-stefano-tenti","regions-italy","cities-roma-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23234,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23232\/revisions\/23234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23232"},{"taxonomy":"writers","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writers?post=23232"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=23232"},{"taxonomy":"cities","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sancarlo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cities?post=23232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}