When Pope St. John Paul II first invited young people to come to Rome in 1984, he was surprised how many showed up. Organizers planned for 60,000; 250,000 came.

They have been coming ever since, through three papacies and 13 countries.

In August, they’ll be coming again — this time to Portugal — and many will be from the United States.

Sacred Heart, a predominantly Mexican parish in Austin, Texas, raised $141,120 to send 39 people (19 teen-agers and 20 young adults) to World Youth Day, said Ana González, 27, one of three organizers of the trip. (Accompanying the group of young people are a married couple, a priest of the parish, and three sisters of the Discípulas de Jesús, a religious congregation.)

Fundraising started with a bake sale of 50 cheesecakes in November 2022. Additional food fundraisers — including a blowout quesadilla sale on Ash Wednesday this past February — were supplemented by garage sales, car washes, a raffle, an all-day event featuring live music and games, and a well-attended benefit concert by Mexican immigrant Ángela Sandoval, who performs as GéLa. Organizers also accepted individual cash donations, including one of $5,000.

Members of the group are receiving financial aid according to a point system based on how many fundraising events they assisted at and how long they stayed at them. Most are going free of charge, and the rest are paying less than $1,000, González said.

She sees a message in the way the travelers — and particularly the teen-agers — are paying for the trip, which would otherwise cost $3,750 per person.

“We hope they understand by now that they have to work for what they want. And also to be thankful and grateful for what their parents do for them,” González said.

Another point of emphasis is that the trip is a pilgrimage, not a vacation. Members of the group have been meeting monthly — and, more recently, weekly — for a holy hour, meditation, and spiritual discussion. The gatherings include practical details such as clothing, money, and passports, but also, as González put it, “How is your spiritual suitcase looking?”

“We are having this process just so when we get over there we experience God’s love and hear our calling, if that’s what it’s meant to be,” González said.

Why go so far away?

“You don’t have to go abroad to have an encounter with God or to become more spiritual. But I think when you see that there are people from other countries that speak a completely different language from a completely different culture to celebrate their faith, to worship the same God — even if you can’t communicate with them directly I think that’s amazing,” González said.

 

Why World? Why Youth?

World Youth Day has roots in earlier events, but as an international mass gathering, usually attended by the pope, it formally began in 1986, in Rome. Since then, the gatherings have been held at uneven intervals, and on every continent except Africa.

This year’s in Lisbon is the 16th World Youth Day. It was delayed a year because of concerns about coronavirus.

The 2023 theme is the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, which is described in Luke 1:39-56. After learning from an angel that she is to be the mother of Jesus, Mary goes “in haste” to see her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who is already about six months pregnant with John the Baptist, to help her — a theme Pope Francis emphasized in his message in August 2022 anticipating this year’s World Youth Day.

“In these troubling times, when our human family, already tested by the trauma of the pandemic, is racked by the tragedy of war, Mary shows to all of us, and especially to you, young people like herself, the path of proximity and encounter,” Pope Francis wrote.

Pope Francis plans to attend all five days of this year’s World Youth Day gathering, which will run Aug. 1-6.

 

Eucharistic Miracle on Itinerary

The Archdiocese of Atlanta is sending several groups, including one of about 40 people from Our Lady of the Americas, a largely Hispanic parish in Lilburn, Georgia. Allen Austin, director of campus and young adult ministries for the archdiocese, is leading a group of 10 young adults.

Members of the group have met twice by Zoom and are scheduled to attend a send-off Mass celebrated by Bishop Joel Konzen, a Marianist and an auxiliary bishop of the diocese, on Monday, July 24.

They are planning to arrive in Portugal a little early, with time to see Fatima, world famous site of apparitions of Mary to three children in 1917, and Santarém, a lesser-known city where a Eucharistic miracle was reported in the 13th century. (A woman who had consulted a sorceress to try to get her husband to be faithful to her took a consecrated host out of church to bring to her, only to see it bleed.)

Austin said World Youth Day in Denver in 1993 had a profound effect on the spiritual life of his wife, who attended it, and that he’s hoping for something similar for the young adults who go to Portugal next month — “At the end of the day, just to have an encounter with Christ, a renewed sense of their journey in discipleship,” he said.

 

Many Paths, One Destination

Regnum Christi, a federation within the Church that includes lay members and the Legionaries of Christ, is sending 165 people from 10 places in the United States — San Jose, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Idaho, Florida, and Louisiana.

Of those, about 60 are high school students, 80 are young adults, and the rest are parents, chaperones, priests and religious (including eight priests and one brother from the Legionaries and six consecrated women of Regnum Christi).

The trips are on four tracks with unique itineraries, all ending up in a public park in Lisbon on Aug. 1, the day before World Youth Day begins, for a gathering of about 4,000 members of Regnum Christi worldwide.

Why go all the way to Portugal?

Regnum Christi member Kathleen Almon, 38, who is organizing the trips, told the Register it is about the encounter, not the place.

“I don’t think it’s the location that matters, it’s more the gathering of young people with the Holy Father and seeing the Church as alive, and a giant community of faith,” Almon said.

 

Go With the Fluid

In northern New Jersey, the dioceses of Metuchen and Paterson are coordinating efforts to send young people to Portugal for World Youth Day.

The Diocese of Metuchen’s contingent is 43. It includes 14 teen-agers, five college students, 18 young adults, four parent-chaperones, and two diocesan priests. One of those young adults is the leader, Megan Callahan, 28, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the diocese.

Callahan used to run mission trips for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), and she uses an image from those days for the World Youth Day trip

At one gathering, she held up a paperback book and asked the audience it if was flexible. Yes, they said. Could it also fit into a jar? Yes, with a little bending. But water — which is a fluid — can not only fit into a jar but also fill it up.

“That’s the kind of mindset, the heartset that we hope all of our pilgrims enter into this trip with. It’s fluid,” Callahan said. “…When we’re on pilgrimage we have to be totally present in whatever space the Lord is moving in at that particular time.”

That means being willing to accept unexpected occurrences, such as the bus breaking down. The trip’s travel agent describes each facet of the itinerary as “subject to change.”

“How do we live ‘subject to change’ well, with joyful hearts and joyful attitudes?” Callahan said. “Because God meets us in ‘subject to change.’”

The group has met twice at the diocesan offices to prepare for the trip, on June 14 and July 10. During the first meeting, a priest led lectio divina (prayerful reading of Scripture). He read the Gospel of Luke’s account of the Annunciation and the Visitation, followed by silence for meditation, followed by another reading of the same verses, followed by a talk on it, followed by a group discussion of it.

The young adult contingent includes eight seminarians of the diocese, whose self-giving Callahan hopes will affect teen-agers and young adults who haven’t yet decided on a path in life. She said she hopes World Youth Day helps them figure out what God wants for them, and embrace it.

“I hope it would be a profound moment of encounter with the Lord for each person who goes, and a profound encounter with the universal Church,” she said. “When we see the Lord in a profound way, it changes everything about our life.”