Think of a young Catholic person you know who, against the raging currents of today’s aggressively secular culture, has the goodness and courage to be publicly and proudly Catholic.

What would motivate someone like that, in the midst of a blazing hot summer that offers them countless “cooler” recreational outlets, to stuff a few belongings into a backpack and travel to another country, maybe halfway around the world, to attend a religious event like World Youth Day?

The opportunity to meet peers who share the same love for the Church, to hear inspiring speakers, to visit with Pope Francis, to deepen their knowledge of their faith, and perhaps to have a life-changing personal encounter with Jesus — all of these would surely rank high on the list. 

What about “inter-religious dialogue”?

Think about it. If you’re not young now, you were once. Would that be something that would put you on a plane, a train, or a pilgrimage on foot to a place like Lisbon, Portugal?

Not a chance.

So why are the organizers of this year’s World Youth Day stressing that very thing, of all things?

Quietly — and confoundingly — interreligious dialogue has emerged as one of the primary themes of the Aug. 1-6 gathering in what is still an overwhelmingly Catholic country. Participants will have the opportunity to tour non-Christian places of worship, such as a mosque, synagogue and a Hindu temple. The program also includes an “ecumenical celebration” that Pope Francis himself might attend. Organizers have made a special point to invite Protestants, Mormons, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and others to participate. (Will they actually come? Why?)

A gathering of local organizing committees in Lisbon in May provided an early clue that ecumenism would be a major emphasis. The festivities that day included a performance of an Ismaili choir, the recitation of a Hindu poem and the reading of passages of the Koran. A bit concerning, maybe, but it wasn’t until earlier this month when Cardinal-elect Américo Aguiar, the auxiliary bishop of Lisbon who is the chief organizer for the entire event, revealed the inner ethos undergirding this World Youth Day that alarm bells really started to go off.

“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that,” he said, explaining that he wants youth of any creed or no creed to feel welcome. “Differences are a richness in the world and the world will be objectively better if we are capable of placing in the hearts of all young people this certainty,” he added.

While the cardinal-elect sought to contextualize his comments, saying that WYD is an invitation to experience God, he also told ACI Digital, “WYD has never been, is not, nor should it ever be an event for proselytism; on the contrary, it is and should always be an opportunity for us to get to know each other and respect each other as brothers.”

Hang on a moment.

The purpose of World Youth Day has always been very clear. It doesn’t need any nuancing. 

 “World Youth Day means precisely this: to search for an encounter with God, who entered the history of Mankind through the Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ,” Pope St. John Paul II said in 1986.

Pope Francis put it plainly, too, in 2021 when he called the world’s youth to Lisbon in 2023 for a “spiritual pilgrimage,” expressing the desire for young people to experience it “as true pilgrims, and not merely as ‘religious tourists’!”

True pilgrims direct their steps toward God. Religious tourists are there for the novelty — to experience religious things, not to be transformed by an encounter with the living Christ.

Unsurprisingly, Cardinal-elect Aguiar faced immediate criticism for his explicit renunciation of conversion. Bishop Robert Barron countered that if you had told Pope St. John Paul II that “the true purpose of the event was to celebrate difference and make everyone feel comfortable with who they are, and that you had no interest in converting anyone to Christ, you would have gotten a look to stop a train.”

The controversy and blowback were reminiscent of World Youth Day Denver 1993, when Mother Angelica decried the scandalous decision to have a woman portray Jesus in a live depiction of the Stations of the Cross, famously calling it out as “blasphemous.” 

Today’s World Youth Day organizers are not pushing for something that is contrary to Church teaching in the same way as in 1993, when organizers of the Way of the Cross were making a political statement about the place of women in the Church, using the platform as a thinly veiled push for women priests. Interreligious dialogue is indisputably an important part of the Church’s mission ad gentes and can be a fruitful way of promoting peace and collaboration between the Church and non-Christians.

But there is a time and a place for it, and Lisbon in early August is not that time and place.

World Youth Days have been a fire hose for God’s grace and mercy for the last three decades. Just think about all the good fruit it has yielded over the years: the many vocations and apostolates, the vibrant Catholic friendships, the enduring Catholic marriages. 

The goal is, and should remain, to save souls, to lead people to heaven. It’s the organizers’ role to foster the best environment possible to allow God’s Truth and his Holy Spirit to set young people’s hearts on fire for the Catholic Faith. Bringing them to mosques, synagogues, and temples will not accomplish that. Neither will ecumenical celebrations, even if the Pope is there.

This is the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day, not anyone else’s.