Last night, during the prayer at the end of the first working session on “The Protection of Minors” in the Vatican, the 190 participants listened to the testimony of a young man from Asia, who chose a poem entitled “The bridge that made the difference” to tell – in the third person – his story, the story of a child repeatedly violated, who at the age of five, was taken from the “happy and whole” environment of his family, for a “just cause”: “the quest for a good Catholic formation”. “As young as five / to a world unknown / full of innocence and fears / he entered the halls that were new”, the young man said in his poem. “The home he missed / here he sought through friends / and guardians to be his parents. Fatal was this replacement / for their desires were strange / to him who was new. His innocence stripped / over and over again / left to fend for himself / into this adult world / he found no hope / and became a recluse. It shred him apart / as the years went by. But none could he tell / for fear of disgrace and shame”. Until one day “he contemplated over a bridge / and asked himself: ‘How would his way down change / change the order of things?’. Never was there an answer. Not a thing in his life / was left untouched. All of it was marred. Was God ever there? For He would be the only one / Who knows it all”. Suddenly, the bridge he contemplated “did show him a way”: “a way that was different / that came to fruition, when / he strangely heard in his noisy, troubled heart / a voice that called for a change to be brought. A journey he began / to fulfill what the voice said. A journey of forgiveness / a journey of reconciliation / a journey that accepted the life that was / a life full of hurt, sorrow and despair”. His story ended with an appeal to the world: “Who will take the responsibility / of lives that are broken? Bring back what is lost! Show that you care! For all that you do / will save the many silent cries / that wait for a saving day”.