Pope urges young people to banish evils of drugs, poverty, racism

Published: 2008-04-22

YONKERS, N.Y. (CNS) -- Addressing a crowd of 25,000 young people and seminarians, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the "monster" that cast a shadow over his own childhood and urged the current generation to banish the darkness that exists today. Speaking April 19 at a boisterous rally on the grounds of the Archdiocese of New York's seminary in Yonkers, the pope said that while young people now enjoy democracy's freedom "the power to destroy does, however, remain." Pope Benedict offered a personal reflection on his own youth in Germany, "marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers." Nazism, he said, "banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good." The pope was forced to enroll in Hitler Youth as a boy but soon stopped going to meetings. In 2006 he said at a youth meeting in St. Peter's Square that he decided to become a priest after witnessing the Nazis' brutality. At St. Joseph's Seminary, the pope said the evils of substance abuse, homelessness and poverty, racism, violence and the degradation of girls and women result in people being treated as objects and the denial of God-given human dignity.

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