“In spite of those who militate to eradicate our trust in you, we are convinced that Your Holiness has the words of eternal life because you bring us face to face with the incarnated Word; with Jesus Christ who is eager to cast his loving gaze on us all,” Gozo Bishop Mario Grech told Pope Benedict this afternoon.

Welcoming Pope Benedict to the Waterfront for a meeting with young people, Mgr Grech told His Holiness that as he himself stated in his first encyclical, being a Christian was not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty ideal, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gave life a new horizon and a decisive direction.

Mgr Grech said that even though the transmission of faith from parents to offsprings or from one religious community to another was still of vital importance, it was more common that the choice to let God in one’s life was achieved as a result of a personal search and choice.

“In the process of this religious search, many of our young people have found themselves in a process of continuous spiritual migration. The craving for God leads them from one spiritual experience to another which although exciting does not quench this thirst.”

He told the Pope that while the young Maltese generation had a healthy attitude to life, some might need support and encouragement because of a false sense of security in their rigid observance of the law and ritual norms, refusing a loving commitment to God and neighbour, even at a high personal cost.

Others might be compelled by the materialistic culture and the pressures of a modern economic system and others might not easily understand that they should allow God to infuse their life with His love by surrendering themselves to Him in complete trust.

So they sometimes placed their confidence in people who they believed could offer them a better way of life “but they are invariably betrayed.”