The Holy Spirit sometimes works in mysterious ways, but during World Youth Day in Lisbon the fruits of the Spirit were manifest in cheerfulness, mutual respect, joyful mingling of nationalities and reverence for the Sacraments as 1.5 million young people gathered for a celebration of the Catholic faith. The story of the Church in Europe has not been wholly happy in recent years – witness the revelations of clerical abuse in the host nation – but this event was a resounding contradiction of those who think of Catholicism as something for the old, something of the past. Tom Colsy’s reports for the Herald show that, behind the statistics of decline, there are groups of determined, counter-cultural young people – some from unexpected places such as the Netherlands – who find in the Church and her promise of salvation both community and hope. The only disappointment was that this remarkable gathering barely registered in most of the European media; a similar gathering for, say, the environmental movement would have elicited far more interested comment.
Pope Francis is plainly at home in Portugal, a country for which he has a special affection, and his address to the young people was pertinent. “As for you,” he told the pilgrims, “don’t be afraid to swim against the current. Take your life into your own hands, get involved, turn off the TV and open the Gospel. Put aside the cell phone and go to meet other people.” Few could argue with that, with the minor proviso that, for the young, the TV is rather less of an issue than laptops and smartphones.
Yet there were elements of the gathering which jarred with some of the young people present – and the welcome for the Pope was taken by some parts of the Catholic media as evidence of support for his wider agenda, such as the forthcoming Synod on Synodality, which would be pushing things. There was little space in the celebrations for liturgical traditionalists, though there were traditional Catholic groups present. A DJ-priest plying his art at the crack of dawn may have raised young people from their sleep, but the episode whereby consecrated hosts were kept overnight in plastic containers for distribution at Mass the next morning was very different, and undermined the veneration due to the Blessed Sacrament. There are rules about how Eucharistic hosts should be reserved and the containers appropriate for them, and they exist for a reason. Some of the attendees responded by devoutly keeping watch through the night in front of these plastic tabernacles, but the fact that this could happen at all shows how far we have to go in recovering a sense of the sacred in the contemporary Church.
And, to state the obvious, though the Pentecostal plurality of tongues was a useful sign of the diversity of the gathering, the one way to emphasise its unity would have been by the greater use of the universal language of the Church – but few of those present were able to participate in a Latin liturgy. These gatherings demonstrate the desirability of teaching young Catholics the responses to the Mass and Benediction in Latin – not as wilful archaism but as a means for all nationalities to join in worship together. This would be true at a Mass at Lourdes or Fátima as well as at World Youth Day. Latin hymns – some as simple as the Salve Regina – would give pilgrims an opportunity to worship as one, just as Catholics once did across the universal Church. And it would usefully heighten the awareness of the sacred and numinous at these gatherings.
The next World Youth Day will be in Seoul, South Korea, an inspired choice given the popularity of Korean culture with young people. Many of them are familiar with Korean food and film – now the Church in the rest of the world will have the pleasure of encountering the ecclesial culture of Korea, at least its southern part. It should also be an opportunity to focus on the position of persecuted Christians in North Korea, and for the enormous youth gathering to pray for them in particular. This is part of the Pope’s attempt to broaden the focus of the Church outside Europe and to embrace areas of growth and evangelisation.
The challenge now is to sustain the momentum of World Youth Day. The million and a half young people who attended are so many seeds scattered by the Divine Sower. It’s for the rest of us to ensure that they do not fall on stony ground. In the parishes and chaplaincies and schools to which they return, we should encourage them to share their experiences of renewal and to put their enthusiasm to use in ministries and movements. Christ will not forsake His Church, but we too have a part to play in encouraging our hopeful young to spread His message.
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