|
|
 |
|
CNS Story:
|
Faith Alive!-No. 27
World Youth Day 2008: Celebrating the Catholic faith
By Louise McNulty
Catholic News Service
It's hard to believe that the number of international travelers (over 125,000) who plan to visit Sydney, Australia, for World Youth Day this July will be greater than the number that attended the Olympics sponsored by that country in 2000.
It may also be hard to believe that this huge number of young people from around the world will not be coming to see a rock star, a movie star or an "American Idol" winner. Young pilgrims and their chaperones will join 100,000 Australians to meet Pope Benedict XVI and to celebrate and learn more about their Catholic faith.
The Sydney event is the 10th World Youth Day held since it was first celebrated in Rome on Palm Sunday in 1986.
Pope John Paul II initiated the international spiritual gatherings. His inspiration was the massive number of young people who attended the Youth Jubilee in Rome in 1984 and participated in the United Nations' International Year of Youth in 1985.
The pope was interested in more than a one-time event, however. He wanted to gather youth from around the world on a regular basis to learn more about their faith so that they might rejuvenate the church.
And he wanted to meet with them!
For the past 22 years, World Youth Day has been celebrated annually by local dioceses on the Sunday before Easter. The international gatherings take place every two or three years and are attended by the pope.
World Youth Day participants will sleep in hotels, suburban homes, schools and church halls or take advantage of camping accommodations.
Although it is called World Youth "Day," the event actually stretches over several days. This year it will run from July 15 to 20, commencing on the 15th with a 4:30 p.m. Mass celebrated by Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, at Barangaroo, a locality on the northwestern edge of the Sydney central business district.
On the following days catechesis (religious education) sessions will be scheduled every morning, and "Youth Festival" activities will be open most days from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. The festival will offer a pilgrimage to the local cathedral, music, films and other visual arts, workshops or forums on topics of interest and a Vocations Expo.
Participants will also have opportunities for reconciliation and adoration.
Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in Sydney Harbor via boat July 17. The next day there will be a re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross.
On July 19, a pilgrimage walk across the Sydney Harbor Bridge will begin at 5:30 a.m. It will extend across the upper span of the arch on catwalks and ladders all the way to the summit some 440 feet above Sydney Harbor. At the summit, participants will have a 360-degree view of Sydney, which will include the ocean to the east, the mountains to the west and areas surrounding the harbor.
Such walks vary in length. Christie Fleming of Hudson, Ohio, who attended the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, estimated the one she participated in to be about eight miles. Although it was long, she said, everyone walked slowly. People joined the trek at various points.
Fleming, now a college junior who will spend the summer teaching in Africa, recalled "standing and walking beside people from Chile, from Iraq, from France and Italy."
" I could see the universal church, how we were all one family, how the church was not just my church, my language, my religion. We're part of a family, and it's huge -- and I could see my place in it," she said.
The high point of the pilgrimage will be joining the pope for the evening vigil July 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Randwick Racecourse. Music, candlelight ceremonies, testimonies, prayer, a homily by the pope addressed to the youth, time for prayer and eucharistic adoration will all be part of the vigil.
Songs and prayer will continue into the night with pilgrims sleeping under the stars in preparation for Sunday when the pope will celebrate the final Mass that will be open to everyone. This year's Mass is expected to draw half a million people.
Emily Kelch of Richmond, Va., was only 18 when she attended World Youth Day in Toronto; three years later in 2005 she went to Cologne with a group of Catholic friends, mostly from Penn State.
"It was an amazing way to see the universal church," Kelch said. "It gave me an appreciation of the things in the Catholic faith, like the Eucharist, that don't need language. I can still feel the graces affecting me now."
The Cologne experience also changed her life in another way. She and her friends backpacked through Europe for three weeks before attending World Youth Day. During that trip she fell in love with a young man in their group. They are now married and will be celebrating the birth of their first child around the time that other youthful pilgrims will be in Australia.
McNulty is a freelance writer in Akron, Ohio.
END
Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
