Marco Carvalho
The Catholic Church celebrates this Wednesday, October 12th, as the feast day of Blessed Carlo Acutis and the Diocesan Youth Commission has chosen the date to introduce the facilities at the new Diocesan Youth Centre on Rua Formosa to the local population.
The institution, which replaced the Diocesan Pastoral Youth Centre about one year ago, will organize its first-ever open day on Wednesday.
The purpose of the initiative, Diocesan Youth Commission Deputy Director Tammy Chio Chu Cheng told O Clarim, is to allow Catholics and non-Catholics alike to become aware of the new services that the Diocese of Macau provides to the younger generations, but also to bring awareness to the work that the Diocesan Youth Commission has been doing in order to convey God’s message to children and youth.
“If I’m not wrong, in this area this is the first youth centre that is open to the general public. We want to serve not only young Catholics, but all the youth of today. We hope that these new facilities, located in the city centre, may become a new beginning. We hope, first and foremost, to approach and attract children and youth who live or study in this area,” Chio says.
“Until the end of the current year, we want to approach several schools, particularly secondary schools. We will try to get in touch with teachers and students, invite them to visit the centre and, after that, try to understand if there are any small groups that might be interested in using our facilities. We have quite a few rooms available with that purpose in mind,” she adds.
The brand new facilities of the Diocesan Youth Centre are equipped with a large kitchen, an events room, a soundproof room to be used by ensembles and music groups and a vast space, to be used as a playroom or rumpus room.
The open day, that the Diocesan Youth Commission will promote on Wednesday, offers interested parties the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new facilities as well as with the activities that the Commission promotes. “In addition to a guided tour of the new facilities, we will also invite those who visit us to enjoy a coffee, in our kitchen. We are inviting young people to socialize, to play board games or even video games. We will also have a second mural painted on the exterior walls of our building,” Chio discloses.
“The purpose of this new mural is to convey the idea that Jesus summons us, as he summoned the apostles. He said, ‘Come and see.’ This is also a challenge that our centre is willing to answer. This is what we want to say to the children and youth of Macau: ‘Come and see’. And see what? That we can play together, that we can pray together, that we can be better together,” the deputy director of the Diocesan Youth Commission underlines.
The life and legacy of Blessed Carlo Acutis is the perfect example that holiness is within everyone’s reach. The Italian teenager died in 2006, at the age of 15, a victim of acute leukemia. Bedridden, the young man offered his suffering for the Lord, the Pope and the Church. Often referred to as the “cyberapostle of the Eucharist”, Carlo Acutis used to say that the Eucharist was his highway to heaven.
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