Greg DalyFor many of the more than 1,500 Irish pilgrims who joined over two million others in celebrating World Youth Day with Pope Francis in Krakow, preparations for the festival began many months ago while the gathering in Poland began with a week in a local diocese.
After time spent with ordinary Poles, World Youth Day 2016 officially began with the Opening Ceremony on Tuesday, July 26, centred on Mass celebrated by Krakow’s Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, long-time personal secretary of St. John Paul II.
Pope Francis arrived the following evening and greeted the gathered faithful from the window of Krakow’s episcopal residence; the assembled pilgrims had spent much of that day, as they would the next two, in catechetical sessions with bishops from across the world.
The bishops spoke on the Beatitude theme, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”, doing so in a range of venues so all those gathered could take part.
Mass was central to each catechesis session, and priests at the sessions prepared the gathered youth for Confession, offering the Sacrament of Reconciliation to all.
A youth festival including sporting, theatrical and cultural events ran concurrently with the catechesis, while various congregations, organisations, movements, institutions and others made themselves available at the Vocations Centre.
Anniversary
On Thursday evening, following a visit to the shrine at Czestochowa and a Mass to mark the 1,050th anniversary of the ‘Baptism of Poland’, Pope Francis returned to Krakow, where he rode in the Popemobile among roughly 600,000 young people gathered in the city’s Błonia Park, before again greeting those gathered before the episcopal residence.
After visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, as well as the University Children’s Hospital, Pope Francis returned to Błonia Park on Friday evening for the Way of the Cross, delivering a short address afterwards.
Saturday began with the Pope visiting the tomb of St Faustina in Łagiewniki and the Divine Mercy Sanctuary, which he entered through the Holy Door of Mercy, hearing confessions shortly afterwards from five young people and then celebrating Mass in the city’s St John Paul II Sanctuary.
That evening the Pope arrived at the Campus Misercordiae – the ‘Field of Mercy’ at Brzegi near Krakow – where 1.6 million young people were already gathered, arriving through the field’s Holy Door and leading an evening prayer vigil.
The crowd at Campus Misericordiae swelled overnight, such that upwards of two million were in the vast field the following morning when Pope Francis returned for the final Mass of World Youth Day, culminating with the gathered crowds being sent out as witnesses of God’s Divine Mercy, and the announcement that the next World Youth Day shall be celebrated in Panama in 2019.