What is this thing called World Youth Day???

  So it is the day before I hop on the plane to head eight hours over the Atlantic Ocean, and I started to think about how World Youth Day got started.  Well here is a brief history...

   World Youth Day started way back in the year 1986 (who feels old now?) by out then Pope John Paul II.  This event was celebrated every two and now every three years as a global event.  A little known fact is that World Youth Day takes place every year, just at the diocesan level.  These large global gatherings served to bring together Catholic youth from all over the world united by their faith, to worship as one and to experience the many facets of how our Faith is lived out in different cultures.  World Youth Day has been held on every continent (minus Antarctica, brrrrrr.)  and has drawn crowds upwards of 5 million, which was seen in Manila.  a neat graph is available online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Youth_Day which breaks down the themes each year, the number of participants as well as where it was held.

   Our Current Pope, Benidict XVI picked up where John Paul II left off with world youth day in 2005 after the death of John Paul II.  The common theme which is echoed in one way or another at each World Youth Day is that the youth are the church of today, not the church of tomorrow.  Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have repeatedly called for the youth to answer the call of evangelization, and World Youth Day continues to provide a background to illustrate that we are not alone in our mission.

   Another interesting piece of World Youth Day is that this event brings together many cultures who otherwise do not come in contact with each other.  how many times have you encountered a Catholic youth from China who had to sneak out of the country to practice their faith, or a teen from Poland who still remembers practicing their faith under a communist rule?  Meeting individuals like this has the ability to impact our lives and faith in a profound way.

  Ok, enough for today, tomorrow we travel!  I hope you all get a good night's sleep tonight, because we have a full plate tomorrow:

- travel from RDU to NY
- travel from NY to MAD (Madrid, but mad is more fun!)