‘Pope Leo, what do you think about?’ — What NCYC teenagers would ask the pope
Description
Friday morning, five teenagers will have a once in a lifetime opportunity — they can ask the pope anything.
Kind of.
In September, organizers selected the 30 young people to help develop the questions, drawing from their lived experience. The team of adults and young people worked together to formulate the questions, which were sent to the Holy Father ahead of the event.
“They will be talking about everything,” Christina Lamas, executive director of the NFCYM, told The Pillar.
“They are not looking for answers they can Google. There is a lot of curiosity about our Holy Father and how our Holy Father responds to certain themes…There’s a deep curiosity of what our Holy Father thinks, and what’s moving him to help the teens understand their own spiritual life,” Lamas added.
While five teens will ask the questions, another 16,000 will watch from the bowl of Lucas Oil Stadium, listening to the pope’s answers.
But as the National Catholic Youth Conference got underway Thursday, The Pillar wondered what other attendees might ask the pontiff.
So we asked. Here’s what they said.
The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Jonathan Moguelvidaleas and Ashlee Manis, high school juniors — Columbus, Indiana
Jonathan: I would ask the pope whether morality and religion work with each other or against each other.
I would like to know this because I have seen a lot of people question whether you have to be moral to be religious, or can you be religious without morality, or can you have morality without religion?
Personally, I was doing a paper on that question in my English class, a research paper, so, I mean, why not get it from the source himself?
Ashlee: I would probably ask him what his favorite color is.
You can really tell how a person is and what they are like based on their favorite color. And also because color is just so beautiful. And I feel like color kind of represents the person.
Kaia Peters, sophomore and Lilly Clin, junior — Columbus, Georgia
Kaia: I would ask him what his daily life looks like in the Church, just his normal day to day, like, what he does.
I would want to know that because anytime you think of the pope, you think of him doing Masses and doing stuff for the Church, but, like, what does he do by himself on a normal day Like, what does he do in his free time? What does he do after he does all the Church services and things for the Church.
Lilly: I would ask him what called him to be a priest in the first place. When you ask that question to any priest, they all have a different story of what led them to the priesthood, so I think it’d be interesting to know what caused him to want to be a priest since he made it to the ultimate job.
Lena Veasey and Alexander Palafox , sophomores — Clarksville, Indiana
United States
