MEETING WITH AUTHORITIES, REPRESENTATIVES OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS: ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

[…] I believe and I dare to say that Mexico’s principal richness today has a young face; yes, this richness is your young people. Young people make up just over half of the population. This makes it possible to contemplate and plan for a future, for a tomorrow. This offers hope and future prospects. A people with a youthful population is a people able to renew and transform itself; it is an invitation to look to the future with hope and, in turn, it challenges us in a positive way here and now. This reality inevitably leads us to think about one’s own responsibilities when it comes to constructing the kind of Mexico we want, the Mexico that we want to pass on to coming generations. It also leads us to the realization that a hope-filled future is forged in a present made up of men and women who are upright, honest, and capable of working for the common good, the “common good” which in this 21st century is not in such great demand. Experience teaches us that each time we seek the path of privileges or benefits for a few to the detriment of the good of all, sooner or later the life of society becomes fertile ground for corruption, drug trade, exclusion of different cultures, violence and also human trafficking, kidnapping and death, bringing suffering and slowing down development.[…]