Written by Katie VanLeeuwen Entering any new situation comes with a certain amount of anxiety for most people. Picture yourself as a young person walking into a crowded cafeteria. The first thing you do is look around to see if there is anyone you know, right? If there are no familiar faces then you pick ...read more

“If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient. But I only look at the present, I forget the past, and I take good care not to forestall the future.” – St. Therese of Lisieux  Written by Celine Diaz In an ideal world, I ...read more

  written by Risabella Roque World Youth Day… In Europe…?! WITH THE POPE?!?! I’M IN. Upon hearing the news two years ago that the next World Youth Day would be in Europe, my thoughts went immediately to my sister. For how many years had we dreamed of going on an epic tour of Europe! And ...read more

Written by Kiara Smyth and St. Dominic Savio World Youth Day Group Excited.  Nervous.  Hopeful.  Energized.  Overwhelmed. These are some of the words my group and I used to explain how we are feeling as we sit on our first airplane heading to World Youth Day in Krakow.  Two of us have been to WYD ...read more

I have never experienced World Youth Day as a pilgrim, and yet I’m a huge fan of the event. In 2008 I had just joined Salt + Light (filling in for a colleague who had decided to volunteer for WYD Sydney)  and was part of the team in Toronto that helped get our Sydney team’s ...read more

By Nadia Gundert, Coordinator of Youth Ministry, Archdiocese of Kingston The Archdiocese of Kingston is excited to have 31 young adults, including two of our awesome priests, attending the upcoming World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland. We have been preparing for this incredible experience since summer 2014. I have been to several other World Youth ...read more

World Youth Day Krakow is just three weeks away, and here at Salt and Light we’re kicking it into high gear.  The World Youth Days are our bread and butter—S+L grew out of WYD Toronto in 2002—and we’ll be on the ground in Krakow and in the studio in Toronto to bring you wall-to-wall coverage ...read more

A couple of months before arriving in Jerusalem, I was driving my six-year-old daughter to school and she asked me about Jesus’ footprints. Not the real one located inside the Chapel of the Ascension, rather, she wanted to talk about the ones from famous poem called Footprints. She had seen the poster of it hung ...read more

Today, fifteen members of the S+L team depart for the Holy Land for a ten-day Lenten pilgrimage where we’ll visit the major Christian holy sites and film a number of programs. We’ll be joined by a larger group of pilgrims from across Canada and the US who are participating through our Blessed Journeys program. Few ...read more

For pilgrims who set out to attend large-scale Church events such as a World Youth Day or a Papal Inauguration, there’s always the remote possibility that you won’t be able to secure a spot at the venue or you get sick and end up missing the event. For those who have traveled halfway around the ...read more