Bangkok (AFP) – Pope Francis warned towards the potential pitfalls of expertise and the competitors for younger folks’s “consideration” on Friday, dedicating the ultimate full day of his Bangkok journey to participating the subsequent technology of Catholics.
The pontiff is on his first go to to Buddhist-majority Thailand, the place only a sliver of the inhabitants is Catholic regardless of the faith’s lengthy historical past within the nation.
However on Friday, he shifted his focus towards Thailand’s youth, warning the subsequent technology of the downsides of fast-encroaching expertise.
“Fast technological developments can open up immense potentialities that make life simpler, however also can outcome within the development of consumerism and materialism,” the Pope cautioned.
“We will be swayed by the voices of this world that compete for our consideration,” he mentioned, talking at Bangkok’s 109-year-old Cathedral of the Assumption.
“At first they appear interesting and thrilling, however in the long term they may go away you solely empty, weary, alone and disenchanted,” he mentioned.
The message was a clarion name to the younger worshippers in Thailand, the place fewer than 400,000 Catholics make up simply over zero.5 % of the inhabitants.
The religion arrived within the nation by way of European missionaries within the 16th century, and the neighborhood has since remained small however spirited — coexisting peacefully with Buddhist neighbours.
“The Thai Church these days is dealing with the identical state of affairs as different nations on the earth, particularly a disaster of reducing vocation,” he mentioned.
– Tech addicted teenagers –
Fading curiosity was removed from evident on Friday, nonetheless, as scores of trustworthy gathered outdoors the cathedral — many jostling for cell phone photographs — for Francis’s second mass of the journey.
“There are different issues attracting (youngsters)… like fascinating content material obtainable on YouTube and it’s straightforward for youngsters to be addicted or focused by these items to change into extra materialistic,” mentioned Siriyaphorn Phongburut, 40, standing outdoors the mass.
She urged the Church to make use of social media to draw younger adherents, in a rustic the place cell phone use is rampant.
On a busy Friday Francis additionally visited a shrine for Catholic martyr Nicholas Boonkerd Kitbamrung and attended an interfaith assembly, the place a blended Muslim and Christian choir sang for him in a symbolic efficiency.
His remaining official responsibility was his youth mass on the ornate Cathedral, filled with bishops carrying sensible purple and gold robes custom-made for the event — the Pope’s included.
His pointed message was not an enormous departure for the Pope, who has lengthy sought to have interaction the subsequent technology of Catholics.
“The Pope all the time offers significance to youth which he believes is the inspiration of society, nation and faith,” mentioned Puttipong Puttansri, a Thai historian of the Catholic Church.
Francis touched down in Bangkok on Wednesday and was met by adoring worshippers desperate to catch a glimpse of the 82-year-old Argentine.
His first mass on Thursday night time — replete with hymns, prayers and conventional Thai performances — drew an estimated 60,000 folks, some crying because the pontiff handed in his Popemobile.
There he urged respect for the downtrodden, together with prostitutes and trafficking victims.
He heads to Japan on Saturday for the second and remaining leg of his Asia tour, which is able to embrace visits to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, each devastated by atomic bombs by the US throughout World Struggle II.
The pope, who years in the past had hoped to be a missionary in Japan, is anticipated to chastise using “immoral” nuclear weapons.
