U.S. pilgrims anxious to meet pope in Australia

c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For 17-year-old Karis Tsolomitis, next week’s World Youth Day in Australia will bring to an end three years of anticipation. The Bainbridge Island, Wash., resident has been looking forward to the trip down under ever since her older brother returned from the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany, with […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For 17-year-old Karis Tsolomitis, next week’s World Youth Day in Australia will bring to an end three years of anticipation. The Bainbridge Island, Wash., resident has been looking forward to the trip down under ever since her older brother returned from the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany, with pictures and stories in tow.

“I actually started saving for it when my brother got back from his trip. I was like, `I’m so going there,”’ Tsolomitis said. “It’s really changed his life a lot, so we’ll see.”


Tsolomitis and approximately 15,000 other youths from across America will attend the six-day festival, which begins July 15 in Sydney. The event brings together young Catholics from around the globe to celebrate their faith. Pope Benedict XVI will lead Mass for an estimated 500,000 people on the final day of the festival.

Other activities include a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross at the famed Sydney Opera House, “coffee house” performances from Catholic music groups, an evening vigil with the pope, and an outdoor sleep-out on the final night.

“It’s an event without words.” said Paula Cadavid, 31, of Acworth, Ga., of the vigil with the pope. She attended the 2005 festival in Cologne, Germany, with other members of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

“It’s just a moment of spiritual fulfillment,” she said.

“Our plan is to grow our faith a little more, and to have an experience of not just seeing the pope, but encountering youth groups (from other cultures),” said Numa Torres, 21, of Silver Spring, Md. “I think we can come back with our faith a little stronger.”

Organizers targeted the event toward teens and young adults between the ages of 16 and 35, but the event is open to people of all ages. It will be the second World Youth Day sponsored by Benedict. The festival has been held semi-annually since its inception by the late Pope John Paul II in 1984.

Although the 15,000 U.S. representatives make them the second-largest delegation behind only the host Australians, the number of attendees will be down significantly from previous years. At the 2005 event, 25,000 Americans made the trip, and 60,000 traveled to Toronto in 2002.

The Archdiocese of Seattle, for example, has previously sponsored groups but will not be sending its own delegation to Australia because of the high costs associated with the trip.


“We did look at it and tried to piece together how much it would be,” said Karla Danson, associate director of event planning for the archdiocese. “It would be a lot of money to try and charge individuals, whereas parishes can do fundraisers.”

Attendees raised money in different ways. Torres and his group from Maryland staged a fashion show and organized a trip to the beach, which helped defray the costs of the trip. Tsolomidis’ troupe raised money by washing cars, chopping firewood, flipping pancakes, and, in true Seattle fashion, selling coffee.

The festival comes at important juncture for the Catholic Church in the United States. While the faith has made gains in recent years due to immigrants from Latin America, young Catholics are leaving the church in large numbers. According a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 22 percent of Americans who were raised as Catholics have either stopped practicing or switched affiliations as adults _ the largest decline of any major faith.

But as Catholicism struggles to catch on among younger generations, the pilgrims traveling to Sydney say they will focus on the common causes that bind them.

“There aren’t a lot of Catholics on (Bainbridge Island) that you can share the experience with and be really close with,’ Tsolomidis said. “Just to meet people all over who share those same values is really cool.”

KRE DS END MURPHYEds: See related story, RNS-YOUTH-DAY, also transmitted July 10.

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