Pope Urges Young to Pray as ‘Model for Grown-Ups’

In a chatty Christmas letter to children, Pope John Paul II is asking young people around the world to pray for peace as an object lesson to adults mired in violence and arrogance.

In a warm, avuncular tone in a letter climaxing his church’s Year of the Family, the Pope remembers his own youth in Poland “as though it were yesterday” and asks young people to assert themselves as prayerful promoters of peaceful change.

“What enormous power the prayer of children has,” the Pope writes. “This becomes a model for grown-ups themselves: Praying with simple and complete trust means praying as children pray.”

It is the first time the Pope has written directly to the youngest members of his gigantic church, and publication of his letter at the Vatican on Thursday was timed to coincide with the bittersweet annual State of the World’s Children report issued by the United Nations.

“It is to your prayers that I want to entrust the problems of your own families and of all the families in the world,” the Pope says in a letter being distributed to parishes worldwide. “You instinctively turn away from hatred and are attracted by love: For this reason the Pope is certain that you will not refuse his request.”

Noting cruelties inflicted on children in trouble spots as diverse as Africa and the Balkans, the Pope mourns for the young people who “suffer many forms of violence and arrogance from grown-ups.”

“They are hungry and poor, they are dying from diseases and malnutrition, they are the victims of war, they are abandoned by their parents,” he laments. “How can we not care when we see the suffering of so many children, especially when this suffering is in some way caused by grown-ups?”

In the report issued at the United Nations in New York on Thursday, officials noted some successes in the painful struggle against consequences of the poverty that afflicts most of the world’s children.

Pneumonia and malnutrition remain major killers of young people in developing countries, but international public health programs are saving millions, the Associated Press reported from the United Nations.

“By mid-decade, about 2.5 million fewer children will be dying every year from malnutrition and disease. And at least three-quarters of a million fewer children each year will be disabled, blinded, crippled or mentally retarded,” said James Grant, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund.