Youths urged to pattern themselves after Mandela

Monsignor Christian Pereira has urged the country’s youths to pattern themselves after “the humility of Nelson Mandela.” He was addressing a group of young people attending a “Day of Prayer for an End to Crime and Violence” at the Fatima RC Church, Curepe, yesterday. “We have to be able to live that humility and allow ourselves to stand the test of our fears. Then and only then will we be able to respond to the call of God. We are living in a chaotic society where everybody wants to be someone else and everybody is doing everybody else’s work, but nobody is doing what God wants them to do.”

Pereira said the recent spate of crime among the youth in TT is associated with peer pressure. He said youths were not often pressured by strangers but by friends, family and people in their community and parish. “Peer pressure is not a sign that what the young people are doing is bad, but it is a sign that those who are pressuring them do not have the faith that they can do good,” he said. Pereira, however, assured that the church was seeking to do its best to guide the youth into positive thinking and also in keeping them off the streets and away from a life of crime. “We can never do enough to stop crime but we are trying,” he stated.