Locals prepare for World Youth Day

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press
And OSV News

Among local people planning to attend World Youth Day Aug. 1-6 in Lisbon, Portugal, are a diocesan seminarian, Brazilian youth group members and leaders, and Assumptionists and those affiliated with them.
Pope Francis is to join the WYD pilgrims Aug. 3 for a welcome ceremony in the city center. He will preside at a Way of the Cross Aug. 4 and a prayer vigil Aug. 5, then celebrate the WYD closing Mass Aug. 6, with an anticipated crowd of 1 million or more.
The United States is expected to have one of the five largest delegations, with more than 28,600 pilgrims, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced July 24. Most U.S. pilgrims are between the ages of 18 and 25, and more than 60 bishops are expected to join them.
Worcester diocesan seminarian Rafael Longhini, a Brazilian who speaks Portuguese, Spanish and English, said he left for France July 10. He spent two days in Paris with the Lazarists, visited the Miraculous Medal convent, then went to Lourdes, where he volunteered to help with pilgrims, Masses and rosary processions. Because of World Youth Day, people are stopping at Lourdes, he said: “every day we receive about 4,000 youth.”
He is to leave for World Youth Day July 31, also go to Fatima and return to the Worcester Diocese Aug. 10, he said. In Lisbon he plans to meet with about 15 young people from the Shalom Catholic Community from Boston.
The “Assumptionist Youth Pilgrimage” of about 30 people consists mostly of Brazilians from the Worcester Diocese, Kenyans from Boston, residents at the Assumptionist Center in Brighton, and students from Assumption University and UMass Amherst, according to Assumptionist Brother Daniele Caglioni, a campus minister at Assumption University, who is going. Their group includes Assumptionists serving in Worcester, Brighton and Mexico.
The group was to leave Wednesday for Elche, Spain, for the pre-World Youth Day week hosted by the Assumption Family, then go to Fatima, then Lisbon.
After World Youth Day, some group members will continue to Paris for the “Footsteps of Fr. d’Alzon pilgrimage” (named for Father Emmanuel d’Alzon, founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption), and then to Lourdes for the 150th Assumptionist-sponsored National Pilgrimage, Brother Daniele said. They are to return home Aug. 17.
Lucas Lima, a coordinator of Army of Christ, the Brazilian youth group at Holy Family Parish in Worcester, said they have nine people going with the Assumptionist group – two older adults and seven people under age 30, including a teenager. He said four are from Holy Family, two from St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Milford, the others from the Boston Archdiocese. They were to leave Wednesday and return Aug. 7.
Mr. Lima said these people are receiving spiritual formation and education to grow in living out their faith by Mission Make Me Holy, started by Holy Family’s Brazilian youth group.
“We were being called out to a lot of missions,” to reach out to other Brazilian youth groups in Massachusetts, start new ones and evangelize young people and their leaders and help them grow in their Christian life, Mr. Lima said. Over a period of one year they are receiving this spiritual training, he said. They started last February and hope to start with a new group of people after this group is finished. (Army of Christ had been receiving such spiritual training for about eight years, he said, but Mission Make Me Holy is new; it is an outreach to other youth groups.) The new group meets monthly for Mass, adoration and talks. Presently they’re focusing on Church history, which included a talk by their associate pastor, Father Cleber de Paula, Mr. Lima said.
Timothy Messenger, director of the diocesan Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, said he tried unsuccessfully to get a group together to go to World Youth Day.
“Our country is very much looking forward to this pilgrimage,” said Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, which oversees the U.S. involvement in WYD. Bishop Barron will be accompanying young people to Lisbon.
 In a statement, Bishop Barron described WYD as “a wonderful occasion for young adults to have a significant encounter with Jesus Christ in the company of the universal Church.”
The event is “also a moment when the Holy Father and the Church’s leadership get an opportunity to listen to the young people present, teach and form them in the Gospel, and ultimately send them towards their vocation and mission in the world,” he said.
 U.S. pilgrims will stay in parishes, campuses, homes and hotels around Lisbon during the WYD week, taking part in prayer, liturgies, daily catechesis, concerts, presentations, dialogue, service and networking with young adults from around the world.
 More than 35 U.S. bishops will lead daily catechetical “Rise Up!” sessions.
 U.S. pilgrims will come together Aug. 2 in Lisbon’s Parque da Quinta das Conchas for an outdoor, evening gathering organized by the USCCB. Music and testimony by young adults will be followed by a keynote address from Bishop Barron, who will then lead a Holy Hour with Bishop Edward J. Burns of Dallas as part of the USCCB’s National Eucharistic Revival initiative.
 The USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth recently collaborated with WYD organizers in Lisbon and U.S.-based Oregon Catholic Press on the English version of the official WYD hymn, “Feel the Rush in the Air,” which was released earlier this month.
 Inaugurated by St. John Paul II in 1986, WYD officially takes place every year as a “Global Celebration of Young People,” which is now celebrated on Christ the King Sunday. In addition, a major international event is held every 2 - 4 years in a different location around the world.
 Past WYDs have taken place in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1987); Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1989); Czestochowa, Poland (1991); Denver (1993); Manila, Philippines (1995); Paris (1997); Rome (2000); Toronto (2002); Cologne, Germany (2005); Sydney (2008); Madrid (2011); Rio de Janeiro (2013); Krakow, Poland (2016); and Panama City (2019).
 
– For more information, visit the USCCB’s web page for WYD: www.wydusa.org. All are invited to follow the U.S. pilgrims on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook with hashtags #JMJLisboa23 and #wydusa.