"World Youth Day"

This year Sydney was the host of “World Youth Day”, which is a festival run by the Catholic church that has every three years to invigorate and engage its youth. I had never heard of it before getting to Sydney, but it turned out to be quite a big deal. It’s termed as a “pilgrimage” and each one of the visitors happily called themselves a Pilgrim.

Sydney open its arms and welcomed 350,000+ kids and chaperones from all over the world. More people came to Sydney for World Youth Day than the Olympics. I know, I was shocked when I heard this as well.

The vast majority either stayed in churches, at the homes of Australian Catholics, or camped at Randwick racetrack. As one of the guys I worked with said, “I’ve been waiting for a miracle at Randwick for over 40 years, and the one I get is the Pope coming. Mate, I was hoping for a 75:1 to hit.”

Surprisingly, even though all these people traveled far and wide to come to the city, it didn’t really have that big of an impact on every day life outside of a few street closures and more crowded buses and trains. Below are a few observations from the weekend:

1. On the first real day of WYD, String and I were walking along the street only to see priests dressed in “monk-garb” with goats and llamas. This was in the middle of the CBD (Central Business District – Australian for downtown). I don’t know where they got the animals from, but according the limited knowledge I have on customs, they had to send them over either weeks prior to departure so they could be quarantined or rent them when they got here.

2. On Tuesday, there was a concert in Bondi where I live. I could hear the music from my room, so went up to the roof to listen. The song was, no joke, “Ain’t no party like a Catholic party ‘cause a Catholic Party don’t stop (repeat).” This was followed by a chant of some of prominent Saints. And if you’re wondering, the party did stop as the curfew for all these teenagers was 10.

3. The pope was all over the city and the news on his trip here. The mass that he led at the racetrack had over 300,000 in attendance. A few days before that, he did a drive through the Stations of the Cross that was set up. He drove right past Bain’s offices so I got to see the Pope-mobile from 22 floors up. Even though very few of us in the office were Catholic (myself included), it was really exciting. As he drove by, there were thousands of flash-bulbs going off and throngs of screaming kids. At that point, I realized that the pope is easily in my top 20 of people I’d like to see drive by, along with POTUS, the Queen of England, the Dalai Lama, and Michael Jordan. And he’s got his own car (like the Bat-Mobile), which is really cool. In case you’re wondering, the top isn’t see through, but rather flat panel like the hood of the car.

4. There was general agreement among Sydney-siders that having WYD come to town was weird for one reason or another. At first, nobody could really put their finger on it. Sure, the goats were weird, but it wasn’t a city full of goats. It was every one of the pilgrims had a matching lanyard and backpack. That answer satisfied me, but didn’t satisfy a cynical, Jewish friend of mine over here. His take was, “They’re all so happy. There’s no way they can all be that happy.” My response, “Well, Dan, religion is supposed to bring people peace. Jesus does that for me and for all the pilgrims. They aren’t faking it. Religion is doing what it’s supposed to.”