Youth event welcomes Tagle

Young people want to acknowledge a bigger presence than just themselves and counter the individualism of the secular age, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, has told The Tablet.

The cardinal was speaking at Flame 2, a gathering of around 8,000 young Catholics at the Wembley Arena last Saturday, where he was the keynote speaker.

Thanking the Catholic Youth Ministry Federation for organising “this wonderful encounter with youth in Britain”, he said: “Young people have a great desire to belong to something bigger than themselves to counter individualism.”

Asked about the challenges facing young people to adhere to Catholic teaching in a secular British society, the cardinal added: “I remember doing a workshop with educators in the Philippines just stressing the beauty of the human person and they themselves eventually became more convinced of the viability of the Church’s teaching.”

When asked about being seen as a future pope, he chuckled: “It’s a joke; it’s a joke.”