Teresa Benedetto transcribes a Vatican Radio interview with one of the bishops from Lazio (the region in which Rome is located), who made their ad limina visit this week:

The ‘rite’ is very simple. You enter, the Pope shakes your hand,
photographs are taken because of course one wants to keep an evidence of this meeting, after which we all sit at the table, and we start to converse – about priests, about the faithful, about various problems.

For me, the main problem concerns the youth, because around Rome, in Lazio, it is not as if we excel in having appropriate places for dialog, for encounter, for welcoming young people.

In our dioceses, we do not have oratories, relations have not been developed wioth the youth, associations have been dwindling – and I wanted to communicate this to the Pope, and indeed, he caught the urgency of creaeting bridges to the Church specifically for young people…

When you became Bishop in May 2005, you wrote a letter to your diocese. In the first paragraph, I was immediately struck that you paid special attention to those who have abandoned the faith…

Yes, because, in my opinion, my diocese, our people in Lazio, like the rest of Italy, need a regeneration of the faith.

We are Catholics by ancient tradition, but this Catholicism has been buried in the dust of habit, has been cast into a mold. Today, the faith should be rediscovered ex novo thus truly giving it a new impulse. We have been drowsing. So I think this should be the primary mission of every Christian community these days.