NEWS STORY: Pope Celebrates Mass for 2 Million Young People, Upbeat on Future

c. 2000 Religion News Service ROME _ Giving thanks for “the gift of youth,” Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass for an estimated 2 million young people Sunday (Aug. 20) and told them that their commitment to the Roman Catholic Church fills him with confidence in the future. The Mass, held in sultry weather on […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

ROME _ Giving thanks for “the gift of youth,” Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass for an estimated 2 million young people Sunday (Aug. 20) and told them that their commitment to the Roman Catholic Church fills him with confidence in the future.

The Mass, held in sultry weather on a 500-acre university campus at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome, capped six days of World Youth Day events attended by young pilgrims from 159 countries. It was the biggest event so far of the church’s current Jubilee Holy Year.


The 80-year-old pontiff, who suffers from a debilitating neurological disease, led a four-hour, candle-lit vigil in the open air Saturday night (Aug. 19) and returned early Sunday morning for the Mass without showing any signs of unusual fatigue.

Although his ailment makes it difficult for him to move, John Paul responded with smiles and waves to the constant chanting, cheering and staccato clapping of the huge crowd. He seemed reluctant to leave the campus when the three-hour Mass ended.

Announcing that the next World Youth Day would be held in Toronto, Canada, in the summer of 2002, the pope said with apparent regret, “Dear young people, we must say goodbye until the next time.”

The Vatican, which had expected 1.2 million to 1.5 million young people to gather at Tor Vergata, estimated the crowd at 2 million Saturday and more than 2 million on Sunday. Many spent the night on the grassy field, singing, dancing and praying below a 108-foot-tall cross.

The young people had to walk from 3 to 6 miles in 100-degree heat to reach the site Saturday. Volunteers distributed 5 million liters of bottled water and sprayed the crowd with water from fire hoses, but thousands were treated at first aid stations for symptoms of heat prostration, and two people were flown by helicopter to a hospital in Rome.

“At the end of this World Youth Day, as I look at you now, at your young faces, at your genuine enthusiasm, from the depths of my heart I want to give thanks to God for the gift of youth, which continues to be present in the church and in the world because of you,” the pope told the young people in his homily.

“I look with confidence to this new humanity, which you are now helping to prepare,” he said. “I look to this church which in every age is made youthful by the spirit of Christ and today is made happy by your intentions and commitment.”


Speaking Saturday night, John Paul recalled the totalitarian regimes and the wars that blighted the 20th century. He said he saw the young people as the “morning watchmen” in the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah promising a better future.

“In the course of the century now past, young people like you were summoned to huge gatherings to learn the ways of hatred; they were sent to fight against one another,” the pope said. “The various godless messianic systems which tried to take the place of Christian hope have shown themselves to be truly horrendous.

“Today, you have come together to declare that in the new century you will not let yourselves be made into tools of violence and destruction; you will defend peace, paying the price in your person if need be,”he said.

“You will not resign yourselves to a world where other human beings die of hunger, remain illiterate and have no work. You will defend life at every moment of its development; you will strive with all your strength to make this earth ever more livable for all people.”

John Paul spoke in Italian, a language most of the crowd did not understand, and he accepted with good nature the applause and clapping that interrupted him. “Thank you for making this a dialogue, not a monologue. Thank you that it wasn’t a monologue,” he said.

The young people, most of them dressed in shorts and tank tops, waved flags, scarves, boaters (straw hats) and balloons. They screamed and ran to the roadside as John Paul arrived and left in his glass-sided popemobile.


In his homily for the Mass, the pope emphasized the importance of the Eucharist to Catholics. “It means that we signal our willingness to sacrifice ourselves for others as Christ has done,” he said.

“Our society desperately needs this sign,” John Paul said, “and young people need it even more so, tempted as they often are by the illusion of an easy and comfortable life, by drugs and pleasure-seeking, only to find themselves in a spiral of despair, meaninglessness and violence.

“It is urgent to change direction and to turn to Christ,” he said.

“This is the way of justice, solidarity and commitment to building a society and a future worth of the human person.”

The pontiff said he also prayed that many young people would discover in themselves a vocation to help fill the dwindling ranks of the priesthood. He said he hoped for “a new flourishing of vocations to the religious life.”

John Paul, who always arranges Masses or prayer meetings with young people on his travels, announced at the end of the extraordinary 1993-94 Holy Year that the church would begin celebrating an annual World Youth Day in 1995 with an international gathering in a world capital every two years.

DEA END POLK

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