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2008 World Youth Day Brings Together Largest Crowd in Australian History

By John Jalsevac

SYDNEY, July 22, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI's weeklong trip to Sydney Australia for the 2008 World Youth Day ended spectacularly on Sunday with a mass attended by some 400,000 pilgrims at Randwick Racecourse and Centennial Park, making it the largest gathering in Australian history.

Similar numbers of pilgrims, both international and local, attended many of the central events throughout the week. It was estimated that in excess of half a million pilgrims and locals came out to welcome Benedict XVI on Thursday 17 July for his official arrival on boat-a-cade and motorcade at Barangaroo.

The final tally reveals that 110,000 international pilgrims, representing 170 countries, converged on Sydney for the global Catholic youth event. Another 113,000 local pilgrims officially took part in WYD08.

The record for World Youth Day attendance, however, is still held by the Philippines, where, in 1995, an estimated 4,000,000 people attended the concluding Mass.

WYD08 Coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher OP said on Monday, the day of the Holy Father's departure, "Although only a week in duration, World Youth Day will resonate in Australian hearts for a long time to come and will forever be remembered in the lives of the young pilgrims."

The next World Youth Day is set to take place in Madrid, Spain, in 2011.

Despite the massive crowds at WYD08 reports reveal that the week's events were often characterized by an emphasis on silence and prayerfulness.

At the concluding Mass the Holy Father repeated and built upon many of the same themes that formed the basis of his talks and homilies throughout the week - most especially his exhortation to the youth to pursue a life of holiness characterized by a deep prayerfulness. 

"God's love," Pope Benedict told the pilgrims, "can only unleash its power when it is allowed to change us from within. We have to let it break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires."

He continued, "That is why prayer is so important: daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church. Prayer is pure receptivity to God's grace, love in action, communion with the Spirit who dwells within us, leading us, through Jesus, in the Church, to our heavenly Father."

Benedict XVI concluded his homily by exhorting the hundreds of thousands of assembled youth to bring the Gospel message to the world. "Dear young people, let me now ask you a question," he said. "What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building something that will endure? Are you living your lives in a way that opens up space for the Spirit in the midst of a world that wants to forget God, or even rejects him in the name of a falsely-conceived freedom?"

"The world needs this renewal! In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair."

"Go forth to proclaim the Risen Christ and to draw every heart to him!" concluded the Pontiff.

Most memorably for those involved in the fight for the right to life of the unborn, the Holy Father, in his opening remarks to the WYD pilgrims on Thursday July 17, asked the powerful question, in the context of a discussion on the "scars" that mar the world's "social environment," "How can it be that the most wondrous and sacred human space - the womb - has become a place of unutterable violence?"

"What of our social environment?" he asked. "Do we recognize that the innate dignity of every individual rests on his or her deepest identity - as image of the Creator - and therefore that human rights are universal, based on the natural law, and not something dependent upon negotiation or patronage, let alone compromise?"

The Holy Father also restated his sorrow over the clergy sex-abuse scandals, both in an apology delivered at a Mass on Saturday, and by meeting with four anonymous victims of clerical sex-abuse on Monday. "Indeed, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that as their pastor I, too, share in their suffering," Benedict said at the Mass on Saturday. "These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged the Church's witness.... Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice."

At the conclusion of Monday's farewell ceremonies, before the Holy Father embarked on his 21 hour flight back to Rome, the Pontiff said, "Dear friends, as I depart from Sydney, I ask God to look down lovingly upon this city, this country and all its inhabitants…And as I bid you farewell with deep gratitude in my heart, I say once again: May God bless the people of Australia!"

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