Pope Francis on Sunday emphasized the importance of the role of women in society in his address before thousands of Filipino youths in Manila.
"Women can see things from a different angle to us, with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions we men are unable to understand," he told the crowd.
The pontiff lauded "the indispensable contribution of women in society, in particular with their sensitivity and intuition toward the other, the weak and the unprotected".
Since he became head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has repeatedly emphasized the role of women both inside and outside the Church, but has been silent about the possibility of ordaining women as priests.
In his speech on Sunday, the pontiff noted that a girl named Gyzelle Palomar, a former street child who was given the chance to ask the pope a question during the meeting, was the only one “who has put a question for which there is no answer”.
Palomar told the pope about her experience as an abandoned child and the story of children like her who got caught up in drugs and prostitution.
"Why does God allow bad things to happen to us when it's not our fault? Why do a few people help us?" asked the girl as she sobbed.
Pope Francis said, “Glyzelle is the only one who has put a question to which there is no answer, and she wasn’t able to express it in words, only in tears.”
“Why do children suffer so much?” he asked. “When the heart is able to ask itself and cry, then we can understand.”
“Jesus in the Gospel, he cried,” Pope Francis said. “He cried for his dead friend, he cried in his heart for the family that had lost its child, he cried when he saw the poor widow burying her son, he was moved to tears, to compassion, when he saw the crowds without a shepherd.” It is only when we learn to cry with those who are suffering that we can begin to understand them and to love them, Pope Francis explained. “If you don’t learn how to cry, you can’t be good Christians,” he emphasized.
"We have so much information. But maybe we don’t know what to do with that information. We run the risk of becoming a museum of young people that has everything but without knowing what to do with them,” said Pope Francis.
