World Youth Day 2008

Sydney hosted World Youth Day this year.  In case you have never heard of WYD, because up until a couple months ago I hadn't, it is an every other year event where young Catholics get together for a week of festivities highlighted by mass with the Pope.  A couple of years ago in Manilla there were over 4 million Catholics in attendance.  This years was the smallest in the last 10 years and there were 400,000 people from overseas.  It was a really cool time to be in Sydney.  There were "pilgrims" everywhere and they were easily identified by there standard issue red and orange backpack.  They were on every street corner singing, playing guitars and shaking tambourines.  On every news station the newscasters were talking about how devoted these pilgrims were to their faith which led to discussions on faith and Jesus.  In the office it brought up questions and discussions about Christianity.  It was really cool for young people to be put into a positive light because until WYD the only time the youth made the news were stories on binge drinking, fighting at the nightclubs, graffiti and vandalism.  Amy and I had to work most of the time so we weren't able to take part in most of the festivities but here are a few pictures of what we did see.

During my lunch break, I have a new job and work in downtown Sydney, I walked down to where the opening mass was held.  They had 200,000 people at the mass.  After mass there was a concert by a few christian artists and then fireworks.  At noon people were just starting to show up.

Our goal for the week was to take a picture of the Pope  He only made three public appearances and we were too cheap to buy tickets to any of the events so we had to be strategic.  

Appearance 1:

The Pope made his grand entrance "The Boatorcade" through Sydney Harbour.  He is on the white boat behind the yellow boat and there are about 100 boats following his boat.  
The Sydney Ports Corp is making sure that if you have a scope on your rifle that you can't see through the mist which as it turns out is effective against cameras as well.  I hadn't thought about this but the Pope is the number one target for assassination according to Mel my favorite morning show news anchor.  She said, "He is a bigger target than George Bush or Kevin Rudd."  Which kind of made me chuckle a little when she said Kevin, not that he isn't important but honestly Australia doesn't have enemies.
Finally,we got a clear view.  You are going to have to zoom in on this one.  Look at the front of the ship where the yellow flag is.  The white poking out on either side of the flag, yeah that's him.  It wasn't a complete loss, we got to see another part of Sydney that we hadn't seen yet and the harbor views were incredible.

Appearance 2:  The Stations of the Cross

Actors reenacted the last days of Jesus' life starting with the Last Supper all the way to the crucifixion.  After that was finished the Pope, in the Popemoblie, paraded around the CBD.  I had the day off so I went to Lectureships at a church in North Sydney so Amy was solo on this mission.  After work she ran down to where she though the motorcade was going only to find out she got bad information and was so tired by then she went home and watched it on TV.

Appearance 3:  Sunday mass at Randwick Racecourse 

This is the culmination of all the festivities.  Like I said earlier, we were too cheap to buy tickets so we found out where the Pope was entering into the racecourse.  After about an hour of walking around all the barriers we waited eagerly with about 50 other people for the Popemobile.  Finally it came led by two police bikes.

We were so excited we started snapping pictures furiously but the Popemobile was going so fast we only had time to take two pictures each and then it dawned on us it was empty.  We quickly reviewed our pictures and sure enough it was a decoy. 

So we made one last effort to see the Pope but as you can see there was no way we could see him from this distance.  He was on the red stage off in the distance.  There ended up being 400,000 people at mass that morning, the largest mass in Australian history.

So we settled for taking a picture of him on the big screen but it just wasn't to be, apparently when you take a picture of a large screen white comes out a blurry purple color.

All in all it was a good week.  I'll leave you with a quote from Pope Benedict XVI:

"The problems of Australia's youth can be solved with Jesus."