The Church's highest mission in the eyes of children

We need a Church that 'knows how to recognise in the cry of a child - hungry, abandoned, abused, frightened - its own highest and inescapable mission'. A Church that continuously recognises and renews itself in the face of the little ones. In the words of Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Holy See's Dicastery for Culture and Education, there is all the Church's attention to the presence of the little ones, not only as the object of pastoral care or social care, but as the subject of ecclesial life. "Listening to children, giving them a voice, welcoming their gaze, is not a symbolic gesture, a kind concession. It is a radically ecclesial gesture'. Because children, the high prelate stressed, have an innate sense of truth, justice, pain and love that adults must rediscover and learn to decipher. 'The Church of the Children, Towards the World Children's Day' was the title of the meeting that took place yesterday in the Pio XI hall of Palazzo San Calisto, in Rome. An initiative in view of the World Children's Day in 2026, held on the occasion of the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, organised by the Pontifical Committee for the World Children's Day, chaired by Franciscan Father Enzo Fortunato.

"The journey towards the second edition of World Children's Day began some time ago. The initiative,' recalled Father Fortunato, 'was a prophetic idea of Pope Francis, one of the many processes he put in place that we have a duty to carry forward for the new generations'. Father Fortunato recalled that in the world there are still "too many children forced to experience war, to flee their homes, to lose their childhood". And he recalled that World Children's Day has 'a basic idea: that children can re-educate the world of adults'. He asked the children, who were numerous in the hall, to be 'loud, enchanted, fragile and strong. Never stop dreaming. Do not let war steal your childhood. Keep playing, keep laughing, keep imagining. Because only you can teach adults how to build a world without war'.

Dramatic was the testimony at the meeting of Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care physician and humanitarian activist who has worked in the Gaza Strip and has already spoken at the United Nations. "Children in Gaza," said the paediatrician, "are systematically killed, deprived of medical care, deprived of education, deprived of schooling, starved". She reiterated the appeals to save Gaza by several doctors and paediatricians left in the Strip: 'Gaza is a test of our integrity,' she continued, 'these children are our future, if we let them die there is no hope. I also believe that justice will be served, but this does not absolve us from our responsibility to act with love, with compassion, with mercy, and to speak out unequivocally against this genocide and against all attacks on children around the world'.

Writer Dacia Maraini recalled that 'the children who die under bombs, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine, are not just distant tragedies: they are wounds that ravage the whole of humanity. We need hope for the future'. He stressed that 'peace is a real urgency, not an abstract utopia'. He recalled Pope Leo's words of a few days ago: 'From Gaza, the cries of mothers and fathers clutching the lifeless bodies of children rise ever more intensely to the sky'.

The second edition of World Children's Day, which last year involved 100,000 little ones, was planned by Pope Francis in September 2026. Now it is awaiting confirmation from Pope Leo. "I had promised Pope Francis and I will also tell Pope Leo: this Committee will walk on its own feet so as not to weigh on the Church's budget," assured Father Enzo Fortunato at the end of the meeting. "We are preparing," the Franciscan father also announced, "for a strong appointment in September, a football match sponsored by FIFA with children and football legends.