Jesus of Nazareth' is the life's work of Benedict XVIFarewell, Benedict XVIBenedict XVI: the great discernment about the CouncilMy first World Youth Day was that of Paris. The coldness that the French capital seemed to show before the multitudinous meeting of a Catholic pontiff with thousands of young people was an almost paradoxical contrast to the warmth that the sun gave to the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims with warm hearts. There I met a dedicated John Paul II, as I would later see in Rome and Madrid... My last WYD was the one in Madrid, for which I had been working as a volunteer for a year before.
If John Paul II was the Pope of my early youth, Benedict XVI was the Pope of my mature youth. The German Pope, without knowing it, knew how to pick up my vital bewilderment and transform it into a path towards God, especially through "Deus Caritas est"This "circular" encyclical taught me that love proceeds from God and is directed to God, and made me see Christ with a human heart as no one had ever seen him before.
Madrid 2011 was also the last World Youth Day of Pope Ratzinger. That day in which a storm succeeded sweltering heat seemed to sum up the life of every Christian. "God loves us. This is the great truth of our life and it gives meaning to everything else," Pope then repeated.
There, in that airfield of Cuatro Vientos, kneeling, while the water fell through the hats of the kit, while the praying silence was more thunderous than the lightning, there I realized that the God who looked from the custody of Toledo "was"; that He was there, next to the old man who, absorbed, contemplated Him, as if He were alone, in a secluded chapel.
When, two years ago, we had breakfast with the news of the Benedict XVI's march to heavenThe memory that kept recurring in my mind was that of that adoration on the mud, of so many lives, like mine, that without much fuss, found their meaning in those days. That is why December 31, for the last two years, has for me an additional connotation to the end of the year and it is that of the beginning of a new stage, that of realizing that certainty of a living God whom I saw in an airfield next to the Pope of Love.
Director of Omnes. Degree in Communication, with more than 15 years of experience in Church communication. She has collaborated in media such as COPE or RNE.
