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| THE CHURCH IN INDIA | ||||
 OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ARE VIBRANT Father Joel D’Cuna is the National Director of Youth for the Catholic Bishops Conference In India In India we have 143 dioceses. I co-ordinate the national youth service for the Church. Catholic Church Media is split into 5 regions, each region has at least 4 dioceses, and with some regions having as many as 26 dioceses. The Catholic Bishop’s Conference in India has set up the NCBYC scheme. This stands for the National Consultative Body of Youth Commission and was set up in 1987. This does not mean that before 1987 we were not involved in youth work, but from then onwards we have had more structures in place to reach out to young people within our country. This has now developed into a new initiative called the Indian Catholic Youth Movement (ICYM). This was founded in February 2000 and is the baby of NCBYC. The difference between these two initiatives is that the latter concentrates on young people themselves, inviting young people to actually get involved with the youth policy of our Church. Young people lead the organisation. We have a National Youth President who is a young person and even at the diocesan level there is the youth representative. In 1987 we set up our first national structure for youth work in India and in each of the twelve regions we established a youth structure. Thankfully, this has now developed into the new, dynamic movement of ICYM in February of this year. At diocesan, regional and national level youth work is seen as a vibrant contribution to the national life of the Church. Although priests are still involved their main function is based on the day-to-day operational activity but the influence comes from the young people themselves. Even at diocesan level there is a youth president who makes sure that the voice of the young people is being listened to. This is repeated at regional and national level. This means that the young person is working with the priest in equal measure. The Indian Catholic Youth Movement has 3 main aims - to empower our young people, to tackle youth issues and to create communal harmony between all young people in our nation. This new movement has taken several years to formulate. It all began in 1989 during the National Youth Convention and at this convention it was decided to develop a national survey of all the young people throughout India. It was also decided that we set up a youth movement and a national youth magazine. Before any of this could take place we had to develop the survey. This started in 1992 and lasted for 3 years. 7,233 young people took part in this and over 150 people were involved in the project. We found that the greatest challenge to our young people was unemployment and the crisis of leadership within the various structures of our nation. People were concerned at how our leaders had become corrupt. This intense survey has provided ICYM with an opportunity to ground its work in, and respond to, the challenges of our young people. We set up this new youth movement as a platform for our young people to express themselves to the Church. In addition, we began to develop a national youth magazine to give a voice to the young people throughout our nation. Through this magazine young people have started to ask questions. One of the greatest needs we have come to find is one of materials to help our young people face the challenges of life as Christians. We have produced 3 important publications focusing on The Father, The Holy Spirit and Jesus. We started off in 1998 with The Holy Spirit, in 1999 we had The Father and this year, the year of the Jubilee, we are focusing on Jesus. We are using these publications to help our young people explore the realities of their faith in the midst of contemporary society. These publications speak about a holistic approach to religion and they are intended to be used at grass root levels. We focus on the age group of 15 to 30 years. There are 24 million Christians in this nation, that is 2.5% of the population. Of these 16 million are Catholic and 25% of the Catholic population are the youth. This means we have a very vibrant 5 million young people representing the Church in our land. I am pleased that the Indian youth have taken part in a variety of national events. Each year we travel to Taize where we take part in reflecting on our faith with our European and international brothers and sisters. We are also giving valuable input to the FABC (Federation of Asian Bishops Conference) and this year we are able to go to the international youth day in Rome. The spirituality of our youth is appreciated abroad. There is a strong emphasis on prayer and our young people are a deeply spiritual people. Our spirituality is reflected through hospitality, in the connectedness of other human beings and ourselves. |
