Pope Francis invites young people to “fidelity” and not to “trivialize” love

Pope Francis encouraged young people to “fidelity” in love, which “is not a low-cost dream”, and not to trivialize it, in the meeting he had at the Lokomotiv stadium in Kosice, the second most important city in Slovakia, during his tour of the country.

The pope listened to the testimonies of three young people, and a couple asked him how to invite young people “to arrive chaste into marriage”.

Francis replied that “love is the greatest dream of life, but it is not a low-cost dream” and insisted: “Friends, let’s not trivialize love, because love is not only emotion and feeling, this in any case is to beginning”.

“Love is not having everything and quickly, it does not respond to the logic of using and throwing away. Love is fidelity, gift, responsibility”, he told the nearly 30,000 faithful who waited for hours for this meeting under the sun enlivened with music and shows.

For Francis, “the true originality today, the true revolution is to rebel against the culture of the provisional, it is to go beyond the instinct and the moment, it is to love for life and with all our being”.

Pope Francis gave them an example of the martyr Anka (Ana) Kolesarova, beatified in 2018 and who died at the age of 16 in 1944 after resisting the rape of a Soviet soldier after the expulsion of the Nazis from Slovakia at the end of World War II. The pope defined her as “a heroine of love” who “tells us to aim for high goals.”

“Please, let’s not let the days of life go by like the episodes of a soap opera,” he advised young people in the most colorful and lively ceremony of the trip.

He also asked them to “dream of a beauty that goes beyond appearance, beyond fashion trends. Dream without fear of starting a family, of procreating and educating children, of spending a life sharing everything with another person, without being ashamed of your own frailties”.

“Big dreams are not the powerful car, the fashionable clothes or the transgressive trip. Do not listen to those who talk to you about dreams and instead sell you illusions, you are manipulators of happiness, “he warned.

He also urged them to “not allow themselves to be homologated” and not to listen to “many who blame everyone and everything, amplifiers of negativity, professional complaints.”

With this act the pope concluded his intense day in Slovakia, which began with another celebration in Presov with the Greek-Catholic community and a visit to the gypsy neighborhood of Lunik IX in Kosice.