Austria: Festive Mass opens Tyrol Day – Vatican News
The Salzburg Auxiliary Bishop Hansjörg Hofer presides over the service in the parish church of Alpbach. He is grateful, said the Bishop, that this day will be opened with a celebration of Mass and he thanks everyone for whom this is really a concern. “Let us pray that belief in God will continue to have a firm place in the hearts of the Tyrolean population in the future, that it will retain its formative and meaningful power.”
The auxiliary bishop referred to the numerous churches, chapels, wayside crosses or even summit crosses that would characterize Tyrol and he emphasized: “Our churches are call signs, but also question marks.” Call signs in the sense that they would admonish: “Don’t forget God !” The greatest danger today is not that God is deliberately rejected, but that many people are completely indifferent to God. “God is simply no longer found in many people’s everyday lives. He plays no role in their lives,” the bishop regretted .
background
The “Tyrol Day” is the traditional start of the Forum Alpbach, which is scheduled to end on September 2nd. At the international conference, academics, business people, cultural workers and politicians will discuss current challenges for Europe’s future along four main topics – climate, security, finance and democracy.
(cap-sst)