SYDNEY, JULY 16, 2008:
For five days it will stand as the biggest religious festival Australia has ever seen: 4000 priests, 418 bishops, 26 cardinals and more than 150,000 pilgrims celebrating mass together on the Sydney harbour foreshore as the World Youth Day got unerway! Catholics from around the world yesterday transformed a long-dormant section of Sydney's docks into a sea of waving national flags, cheering, singing and crying young pilgrims. They gathered to hear the leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, celebrate mass as the sun set on a magnificent winter's day. Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, welcomed the pilgrims in several languages, and with a broad Australian "G'day". "Too often in the history of the world, when young people travel in great number to other parts of the world, they do so in the cause of war, but you here today are here as pilgrims of peace," the Prime Minister said. "Some say there is no place for faith in the 21st century, I say they are wrong. Some say that faith is the enemy of reason, I say also they are wrong" he added. Cardinal Pell welcomed the pilgrims to Sydney, speaking in French, German, Spanish, Italian and English before his homily. He said young Catholics should struggle against their "fat, relentless egos" and comm
it themselves to their faith. "Following Christ is not cost free, not always easy, because it requires struggling against what St Paul called 'the flesh' - old, fat relentless egos, old-fashioned selfishness," he said. The mass combined the old and the new - a new musical setting, the Our Father said in Latin, a choir of 300 and an orchestra of 80 young people. Rachel Karuana, 20, from Kenya, described the mass as one of the most emotional experiences of her life. She said the pilgrimage to Australia took her four days, four plane trips and many more bus rides. But being here among other young Catholics had made the journey worthwhile. "This is so big, I don't have words," she said. "Faith is something you need to make work and this is what I'm doing being here." (Courtesy ‘The Australian’)