ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 1, 2023 / 16:00 pm
Of all the young people from countries participating in World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, those from Spain are the most numerous. At least 75,000 of them will participate in the event that began Aug. 1 — a high number of young people from an increasingly secularized country.
During the days prior to the start of this long-awaited event, the presence of Spanish youth was noticed throughout the streets of the Portuguese capital and its surroundings, a witness that the faith is still alive in Spain despite the decline in the practice of religion.
At a July 31 press conference in Lisbon, Cardinal Juan José Omella, archbishop of Barcelona and president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that sometimes “the falling tree makes more noise than the green shoots rising up.”
“And this is a sign that there are a lot of green shoots that are growing and that it’s the future. That’s why we live with hope, and a missionary and apostle never shrinks in the face of difficulty but rather grows with the small hope of a green shoot and not of 20 falling trees,” he stressed.