TO YOUTH: BE PEACEMAKERS, BE BUILDERS OF A BETTER WORLD

VATICAN CITY, SEP 23, 2001 (VIS) - The Holy Father arrived at Eurasia University in Astana at 6:30 p.m. today and, following a tour of the campus, held a meeting with young people in the university's Great Hall. About 8,500 students from numerous countries are enrolled in the university.

The Pope pointed out that the university's "very name, Eurasia, indicates the particular mission which it has in common with your great nation which is a point of contact between Europe and Asia: a mission of linking two continents, their respective cultures and traditions and the different ethnic groups who have mingled here through the centuries."

"Peace be with you," he told the young men and women. "May peace fill your hearts! Know that you are all called to be builders of a better world. Be peacemakers, because a society solidly based on peace is a society with a future."

He told them he knows that youth "are interested in the basic questions ... Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Where am I going? My answer, dear young people, is simple but hugely significant: You are a thought of God, you are a heart-beat of God. ... You matter to God in your completely unique individuality."

"Here you sit, side by side, in a spirit of friendship," John Paul II remarked, "not because you have forgotten the evil there has been in your history, but because you are rightly more interested in the good that you can build together. ... Your country has experienced the deadly violence of ideology. Do not let yourselves fall prey now to the no less destructive violence of 'emptiness'." He asked the youth to "realize that you are not your own masters; open yourselves to the One Who created you out of love."

The Pope said that people today "at times delude themselves that they are all-powerful because they have made great scientific progress and managed in some way to control the complex world of technology. But every individual has a heart: intelligence may drive machines but it is the heart that beats with life!"

In closing remarks, the Holy Father said that "in people's minds there is the growing conviction that we cannot go on living divided as we are. Unfortunately nowadays, when communications are becoming easier by the day, differences are often apparent in still more dramatic form."

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