Predilection for childhood

• Autor(a) principal: Pratas, Maria Helena da Guerra
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/gaudiumsciendi.2019.7490

On May 13th 2017 were canonized in Fatima two children, Jacinta Marto and Francisco Marto, the message of the Virgin depository. However, it was not easy, during the process of beatification, to conclude that two kids could be holy, achieve Holiness by the heroic exercise of the Christian virtues. The example of these first children of Fatima beatification opened in a way a new religious turndown reconfiguration to holiness also of children, not always properly valued in the various pastoral dynamic. John Paul II, at the homily of their beatification, wanted explicitly to support the beatification of two children who were not martyrs in the words of Jesus in the Gospel: "Father, ... to you I offer praise; for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children" (Mt 11: 25) (…)". The same Pope stated at the general audience after beatification: "With the two shepherd children of Fatima, the Church has beatified two very young people because, although they were not martyrs, they showed that they lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree despite their young age. The heroism of children, but true heroism" (Audience, May 17 2000). The aim of this communication was to study - using the theological method - how childhood is seen in the texts of Scripture, the Christian Tradition and the recent Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.