Pope Francis urges young to put prayer above texts

Pope Francis wrapped up his Polish visit yesterday with a huge outdoor Mass where he told young people to look beyond the instant gratification afforded by technology, and instead to try to change the world.

Hundreds of thousands of young people, many of whom camped out for the night, waved national flags and cheered as Francis arrived to say the Mass in a large field on the outskirts of Krakow at the end of his five-day trip to Poland, where he presided at the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day festivities.

Francis, 79, who has said he is a “disaster” with technology, sprinkled his sermon at the last major event of the trip with social media and technology terms.

He urged the young people to “download the best link of all, that of a heart which sees and transmits goodness without growing weary”.

He said their response to the challenges of life cannot be “texting a few words,” that prayer should be given pride of place over their internet “chats”, and that God’s memory was not a “hard disk” filled with files on everyone, but more of a compassionate heart that wants to help them “erase” evil.

Francis encouraged them to continue “to be dreamers (who) believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers”.

Attending Francis’s closing Mass yesterday were some of Poland’s main leaders, including president Andrzej Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative ruling Law and Justice party.

Mr Kaczynski is widely regarded as the most powerful figure in Polish politics and toes a generally pro-Catholic but anti-migrant line.

The trip has been marked by heavy security, including metal detectors and sniffer dogs at most events. During an unscheduled stop in a Krakow church on Saturday night, Francis condemned the “devastating wave of terrorism” and war that has hit the world.

When he started the trip on Wednesday, Francis said the killing of a priest in France by suspected Islamist militants and a string of other attacks were proof the “world is at war” but that it was not caused by religion.

He announced that the next World Youth Day would take place in Panama in 2019.