The president of the Brazilian bishops’ Youth Ministry Committee is exhorting priests to bring the experience of Mary’s maternal love to young people.

“Mary appeared to the shepherd children in Fatima, and the devotion to Mary Help of Christians was spread by Don Bosco so that children and young people, especially the abandoned, might feel the essential experience of being loved by a Mother who will never leave them,” explained Bishop Eduardo Pinheiro da Silva.

“How many teens and young people in our society and Church suffer from emotional need,” he said in a letter to the bishops of Brazil. “The maternal dimension in our relationships is essential for the comprehensive formation of these little ones,” he continued. “It’s not enough to love young people. It is essential that they sense that they are loved.”

The Church helps to experience this essential maternity in times of great change, he continued.

For this reason, pastors “and all other lovers of the cause of youth” should allow the Holy Spirit to guide them so that in the example of Mary their lives might be a joyful witness of devotion to God and service to others. “You cannot imagine the impact and force that small acts and gestures have daily on the lives of the young people around you,” Bishop da Silva said.