Are you nostalgic about previous World Youth Days?[singlepic id=2 w=240 float=right] Did you meet your wife in Denver 1993? Did you come back to the Church in Compostela in 89? Or did you begin to consider a vocation to the Religious Life in Rome in 2000? Was Sydney 2008 a game changer for you? No matter, ...read more

Nobody in Spain is up at 8:30am on a Saturday morning. Nobody. Except this Saturday. A handful of volunteers from World Youth Day were up and moving at 8:30am. The lure was a very rare visit to La Aguilera and a unique religious community for women based there called Iesu Communio. They don’t like to appear ...read more

Working at World Youth Day has been an eye-opening experience both in terms of experiencing a new culture, but also being exposed to the richness of the universality of our Church through the different movements that are represented in the WYD organization. Some are new realities, some are just new to me like the Schoenstatt ...read more

Just a 30 minute train ride from Madrid, in the region of Castilla – La Mancha, lies Toledo. Today it’ a small town with medieval roots and a whole host of inhabitants who commute to work in Madrid every day on the high speed AVE train. In it’s bricks however, one glimpses the days when ...read more

Working at World Youth Day is like working inside a laboratory where everything happens fast, loudly and with an explosion of colour…and all of it is fueled by a faith that needs to be shared. Even so, there are days when a familiar face is a welcome site. This past week I got a visit ...read more

When Pope Benedict arrives in Madrid on August 18 one of the first things he will do is visit two of the most iconic places in the city…and, of course, meet with the more than one million young people who will be in town to see him. The Holy Father is expected to arrive at ...read more

VALENCIA, Spain — In medieval Valencia carpenters would mark the feast of St. Joseph by clearing their workshops of old projects, prototypes, pieces that didn’t work out, etc. On the eve of the feast of St. Joseph Valencian carpenters would set these pieces on fire. This fire was considered a purifying fire, eliminating the old ...read more

World Youth Day pilgrims are internationally-renowned for being polite. So it must have been in hushed tones that some expressed their dissent. Not to Pope Benedict, who generated enthusiastic responses at the Cologne and Sydney events in ’05 and ’08, respectively. Nor to the selection of this year’s host city, sunny Madrid. But rather, displeasure ...read more

The Vatican is using YouTube and Facebook to promote the upcoming Beatification of John Paul II. He will be named Blessed on May 1st this year. This official Facebook page and YouTube channel uses social networking tools to open up the vast documentary archives held by Vatican Radio and the Vatican Television Centre. Using modern ...read more

World Youth Day Madrid will be a totally “green” event according to organizers. In Madrid Thursday  morning the Main Events department and Zeroemissions, a Spain-based company that specializes in making large world events emissions free, announced plans to make WYD eco-friendly. Some of the initiatives aimed at making WYD environmentally friendly have never been seen ...read more