The Final Document of the Synod, at n. 125, invites the Christian community to "move away from the self-referentiality of the ‘I’ of self-preservation towards serving the building of a ‘we’ that is inclusive vis-à-vis the whole human family and the whole of creation."

The post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Christus Vivit, takes up and re-launches the provocation also with operational indications and envisages a "popular youth ministry". "The Synod called for the development of a youth ministry capable of being inclusive, with room for all kinds of young people, to show that we are a Church with open doors. Nor does one have to accept fully all the teachings of the Church to take part in certain of our activities for young people. It is enough to have an open mind towards all those who have the desire and willingness to be encountered by God’s revealed truth. Some of our pastoral activities can assume that a journey of faith has already begun, but we need a “popular” youth ministry that can open doors and make room for everyone, with their doubts and frustrations, their problems and their efforts to find themselves, their past errors, their experiences of sin and all their difficulties." (n.234)

The Christian community, walking with young people, feels itself provoked to a radical renewal. How to encourage an inclusive mentality? What implications does such a ministry have for the Church? What cultural challenges does it intercept? The seminar took up these questions and indicated possible paths, addressing them from different points of view: sociological, strictly pastoral and ecclesiological.

Professor Cecilia Costa, a professor of Sociology at the Roma Tre University, highlighted some youth issues, such as the search for meaning, the need for recognition, the search for relationships of reciprocity and accompaniment, a need for God full of intimacy and affectivity… She suggested a ministry capable of flexibility and the nurturing of relational and affective registers.

Mons. Paolo Giulietti, archbishop of Lucca, former director of the National Service for Italian Youth Ministry, re-read the Christus Vivit in an operational key. He emphasized the many aspects of self-referentiality present in the current life of the Church and shed light on the paths of or towards a more open and more popular pastoral ministry, insisting particularly on the plurality of the itineraries and on the need for unstructured experiences capable of favoring the protagonism of young people.

Professor Fr Roberto Repole, Director of the Turin Section of the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, showed how current pastoral challenges imply a re-understanding of the very meaning of being Church, called to reconfigure itself in relation to anthropological-theological categories that are especially important today: the gift or giving, bonds and relationships, gratuitousness, hospitality, fraternity.

The seminar tried to make different points of view interact and was born, indeed, from the desire for interaction between the three Institutes of the Faculty of Theology. As pointed out by the Rector, prof. Fr Mauro Mantovani, the seminar wished to express inclusiveness starting from the very start of preparations, in its working method, in its organizational style.

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