Red World Youth Day bandanas recall love of martyrs

Cordoba, Spain, Feb 24, 2011 / 14:03 pm

Bishop Demetrio Fernandez Gonzalez of Cordoba, Spain recently explained that the red bandanas that were distributed to World Youth Day participants in his diocese recall the sacrifice of Christian martyrs.

Bishop Fernandez sent an article to CNA on Feb. 21, explaining that “for Christians, in their 2,000 year-long history, red is the color of the blood of the martyrs, it is the color of the Holy Spirit.”

“This is not the color red of the Marxist revolution, which was a resounding failure, nor of the nihilism of Nietzsche, which leads to nothing and to meaninglessness even though it exalts the super man.” Nor, he continued, does it symbolize “the sexual revolution of Freud and his followers, which enslaves people everywhere to sex.”

On the contrary, “the red color of the bandanas given to our young people … represents Christian love, which has built history on the foundation of Jesus Christ,” the bishop said.

On Feb. 19, thousands of young people gathered in the city of Cordoba to prepare for World Youth Day with music and a liturgy.

The event was intended to encourage young people to “change their lives, to draw closer to Jesus Christ, to live in a state of grace and recover the purity of soul that is offered in the sacrament of
forgiveness,” Bishop Fernandez said.

“The future of the Church and of our society is in these young people,” he stated.