At four in the morning, at that youth retreat, I was still going to confession. Fifty boys and girls, I had been a priest for four or five years; it was November, the nineties, maybe 1996. The retreat, called “Scheme 1”, brought together the flour from more than twenty youth groups on Terceira Island, and there was an atmosphere of poems in the air. We were real friends, acquaintances from other parts of the world, not least because the youth of the 80s and 90s grew up in one of the most beautiful eras in contemporary history. We talked to each other, expressed our points of view, and learned the importance of listening from an early age. Another factor made that youth special, cheerful, and talkative, with ideas discussed to the point of exhaustion: there were no cell phones or social networks, an unthinkable reality today. It made all the difference.

The youth of the 80s and 90s brought a huge dose of generosity. Me, at four in the morning, in the semi-obscured chapel of the Palácio de Santa Catarina, chatting with Manel – generosity itself – long into the night: our dreams and projects, such as creating a more committed youth group called “A Heart for the Poor,” an initiative that lasted about three years, which consisted of encouraging youth groups to get involved in social causes; or the “Agape” group (love in Greek), which, as well as meeting every week, went to visit places of poverty, homes inhabited by lonely elderly people, the sick, nursing homes, a whole world to love. With a guitar on his back, David toured the island and the rest of the world. We lived to the full, life made sense, we fell in love with Jesus and each other, we experienced what it was like to love, it wasn’t difficult, the atmosphere was springtime. We dreamed.
We also learned from those we considered idols, especially in music. That song that dominated the 80s, “USA For Africa” (“We are the World”), which brought together the best of Anglo-Saxon music, raised millions in a gesture of solidarity with the African continent. This was followed by thousands of initiatives where artists demonstrated their sense of the Common Good. Initiatives against poverty and in favor of world peace multiplied. The lyrics of the songs, many of them idealistic, distilled messages for a better world, and the multi-millionaires of the time lavishly gave away part of their wealth to help charities or set up their foundations. It was a dream. On November 9, 1989, on this positive wave and with the help of unparalleled figures such as Gorbatchov, Reagan, and John Paul II, the symbol of all divisions fell,
the Berlin Wall. We looked to the future without fear and full of hope… We dreamed.
What do we see in the world thirty or forty years later? What is left of this golden age of hope? How far have we come, and, above all, how did we get here?
The fall of the Soviet threat and the “end” of state communism gave wings to the capitalist drive. Emphasis was placed on capital and work, and its dignity was forgotten. The economies of large companies and even states were based on the most unbridled speculation, and, as a result, the gap between the very rich and the very poor soared to unimaginable dimensions. The law of the jungle has become popular in the world of finance, and what really matters is capital. Mankind, without some sort of guardrail, will exhaust everything to the end, to the limit, as far as possible, to the point of self-destruction.
Artists and musicians today, “as well as being terrible musicians, are concerned with making money, parading on the red carpet, doing ads for luxury groups, and posing for Instagram and Tik-Tok. It’s a world of narcissism, mediocrity, and tabloid intrigue,” Clara Ferreira Alves said. And this is more or less what today’s young people drink from their idols: narcissism, mediocrity, emptiness of meaning in life.
What about today’s big billionaires? They no longer have the social foundations that their predecessors had; they no longer care about Ethiopia or South Africa, the war in the Balkans or Rwanda, human rights, or the climate crisis. The 400,000,000,000 dollars (a very large number) that makes Elon Musk the richest man in the world, richer than Portugal as a country, is really overwhelming. Bezos is not far behind, and the list of super billionaires is growing. But they are more interested in co-locating a man on Mars than in the Gaza Strip; they are more enthusiastic about exploring outer space than starving millions of mouths languishing on migratory flows’ roadsides. Never have we had so much, never have we been so little.
The generous Manel I spoke about earlier still has the same generous heart at 50. Like me, he doesn’t understand what the world has come to. He doesn’t understand, as I do, how values we considered inalienable 30 years ago may now be kicked around with frightening boastfulness. That’s right, my brother Manel, we’re getting old. This world is not for old people… I suspect it’s not for young people either. Why have we stopped dreaming?

Fr. José Júlio Rocha is a Catholic Preist in the Diocese of Angra and the Azores.

In the opinion section of the Diário Insular newspaper – translated by Diniz Borges

This is a superb non-fiction piece that we are happy to share with readers of Filamentos. We thank Fr. Júlio Rocha for his generosity.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks the Luso-American Education Foundation for sponsoring FILAMENTOS.