Pope Benedict says westerners experiencing realization that there is something “more” to life

Vatican City, Aug. 15, 2006 (www.theindiancatholic.com)   -   After years of creating a world with no room for God, people in the west may be experiencing a, “quest for ‘something bigger,’” Pope Benedict XVI said in an interview, made public this weekend.

As part of a television interview in preparation for a visit to his homeland, the Holy Father spoke to German and Vatican reporters about the wave of “enlightenment or secularization” that the west is experiencing and the resurgence of faith, which is now occurring in spite of it.

Benedict said that in the western world, “it’s become more difficult to believe, because the world in which we find ourselves is completely made up of ourselves… humanity has rebuilt the world by itself and finding God inside this world has become more difficult.”

At the same time, the Pope said, the west is encountering other cultures who still maintain an active faith in God. “These cultures are horrified when they experience the West’s coldness towards God.”

Through this encounter the, ‘presence of the sacred’ reawakens many in the west and, “The quest for ‘something bigger’ wells up again from the depths of western people.”

Pope Benedict said that, “the search for something ‘more’ is especially evident in the youth.” The Pope pointed to the tremendous response to World Youth Day in Cologne.

Today, he said, a great number of youth are in the process of searching; and through their searching the Church can offer faith as the answer.