During a Mass to mark the Feast of St. John Bosco, last Sunday at the Don Bosco Oratory in Victoria, Gozo, Bishop Anton Teuma made some very important remarks on the future of our children and youth.

The Bishop suggested among other things that as a society “we help them find a sense of belonging and direction, as well as a code of ethics to guide their lives.”

“What do our young people have to rely on? My fear is that sometimes we are creating too many benchmarks for them. Imagine a 10 or 11 year old child: so he has a large part of his time at school, then later he has to go to either football or art class, or private school, or doctrine.

“When is this child at home with his mother and father? Let us ask ourselves seriously: how many hours does a child spend today at home with their father? To whom does he belong? To school, to private school, to nursery, to art school, to other extra-curricular activities that he has? And because of this our children end up disoriented.

“They are like that child who has a thousand toys around him; then he picks one up, looks at it, puts it on the floor; and he grabs another one next to him, looks at it, puts it on the floor; and he grabs the other one next to him; then he gets tired and grabs it and walks out of the room. He can’t get a grip, he’s disoriented. But why disoriented? Because there’s no real sense of belonging. Let’s be a little careful,” Bishop Teuma said.

The Bishop went on to say that “the solutions do not come by extending school hours, as many are unfortunately proposing. The solutions come by finding a balance between the various aspects of the lives of our children and young people, the balance that St. John Bosco found. Our young people, like those of his time, are young people without direction. The only direction is to earn money.”

“The path to this direction is as little suffering as possible. This is the message that we are constantly passing from top to bottom to our children, which is a false message, a false message, because we all know that without suffering nothing is achieved,” stated Bishop Teuma.

Photo: Dioces of Gozo/Victor Zammit

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