Pope tells young: Try politics and activism; don’t be couch potatoes

RZEGI, Poland (AP/AFP) — Pope Francis challenged hundreds of thousands of young people who gathered in a sprawling Polish meadow to reject being a “couch potato” who retreats into video games and computer screens and instead engage in social activism and politics to create a more just world.

Peppering his speech with contemporary lingo, the 79-year-old Pope, despite a long day of public appearances, addressed his eager audience

with enthusiasm Saturday on a warm summer night.

Francis spoke of a paralysis that comes from merely seeking convenience, from confusing happiness with a complacent way of life that could end up depriving people of the ability to determine their own fates.

“For many people it is easier and better to have drowsy and dull kids who confuse happiness with a sofa,” he told an estimated one million people gathered at a vigil in a huge field in Brzegi, a village outside the southern city of Krakow.

Organizers said 1.6 million people came to hear the Pope Saturday night, but police did not give a crowd estimate.

“Dear young people, we didn’t come into this work to ‘vegetate,’ to take it easy, to make our lives a comfortable sofa to fall asleep on. No, we came for another reason: To leave a mark,” the Pope said.

Francis decried a modern escapism into consumerism and computers that isolates people. The same message ran through a ballet performance at the site before his speech: A lonely woman seeks human connections but is rebuffed by people on computer tablets and cellphones until one man emerges from behind a seethrough barrier to connect.

For Francis, Jesus is the “Lord of risk ... not the Lord of comfort, security and ease.”

“Following Jesus demands a good dose of courage, a readiness to trade in the sofa for a pair of walking shoes and to set out on new and uncharted paths,” Francis said.

He challenged his sea of listeners, spread out on blankets, to make their mark on the world by becoming engaged as “politicians, thinkers, social activists” and to help build a world economy that is “inspired by solidarity.”

“The times we live in do not call for young ‘couch potatoes,’” he said to applause, “but for young people with shoes, or better, boots laced.”

Like a politician working a crowd, Francis yelled out to his audience: “You want others to decide your future?” When he didn’t get the rousing “No!” he was going for, he tried for a “Yes.”

“You want to fight for your future?” he asked. “Yes!” they roared. Pope Francis asked hundreds of thousands of young people during a vigil in Poland to pray for the people suffering during the war in Syria.

He said: “Today the war in Syria has caused pain and suffering for so many people, for so many young people like our good friend Rand, who has come here and asked us to pray for (her) beloved country.”

He said he prayed for war-torn Syria, quoting a pilgrim from the city of Aleppo who had testified before the Pope and crowds of the fight between life and death in her “forgotten city.”

“Our response to a world at war has a name: Fraternity,” he said.

The Pope’s appeal came hours after he celebrated a Mass with priests, nuns and young seminarians whom he also urged to leave their comfort zones and tend to the needy in the world. He said Jesus wants the church “to be a church on the move, a church that goes out into the world.”