POPE Francis has a message for young Catholics: Look away from your cell phone screens and make eye contact with people instead.

During a meeting with Catholic Action-affiliated youth groups, the pope warned that “a great risk for a boy and a girl today is to spend our days keeping a cell phone screen in front of our eyes,” the Catholic News Agency reported. 

Eyes were not created to look into the virtual world, he said. The youth should look into the eyes of the people around them instead.

“Our eyes are meant to look into the eyes of others. They were not made to look down at a virtual world that we hold in our hands, but to look up to heaven, to God, and to look into the eyes of those who live next to us,” he said.

He also emphasized through a Bible verse that the Lord doesn’t want his people to be holed up. He wants them  to transform others into disciples of the church.

“Lord does not want us to spend our days closed up in ourselves” but to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” he said. 

The head of the Vatican encouraged children and teenagers to look for one another as it is the secret to a united nation.

“In a world that tends to isolate us, divide us, and that pits us against each other … the secret is precisely to take care of others,” he said. 

And with Christmas just around the corner, the pope reminded people to use their eyes to convey the jubilation found in salvation.

“Our eyes are made to convey the joy experienced from having met Jesus, that friendship that transforms existence, that makes us embrace life and enables us to discover its beauty,” he said. 

Pope Francis has been a critic of mobile phones. In previous years, he consistently lectured the members of the religious congregation about the disadvantages of using the devices.

In 2019, he urged the Catholic faithful to lessen their mobile phone usage as it might be dangerous for them once they get addicted to the device.

Courtesy: Associated Press/Andrew Medichini