Our People

What can World Youth Day mean for Australians? (WYD 2005)

Address to 2,500 Australian Pilgrims to World Youth Day, Festival Hall, Cologne

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
16 August 2005

The testimonies and the songs we have just heard and the 2,000 other stories which might be told in this room, demonstrate that World Youth Day means different things to different people. For the hosts it means offering the young people of the world an occasion and a space to meet, to make a pilgrimage in faith, to experience local hospitality, to be evangelized and catechesized, and to take part in some awe-inspiring liturgies. For the Pope, the bishops, the priests, the Harvest people and our youth leaders it means a whirlwind of blessings and preaching, hearing and absolving, praying and supporting the people who are the future of our Church—the young—and that is both exhausting and exhilarating. This will reveal the unity and dynamism of a Church that is the biggest and oldest institution in the world yet at the same time the newest and freshest. In the process we will allow the Holy Spirit to recharge the Church’s batteries.

For some young people it means a first chance to get away from home, to go o/s, to see a bit of the world, and to have fun at the biggest ‘rave’ in the world. I hope it will mean more than that for you. For you it might mean some of those things, but also some things much deeper: a personal, life-changing encounter with Christ, his Blessed Mother and the saints; a new, closer relationship with the Church; a rediscovery of the centrality of the Mass and the sacrament of Reconciliation; growth in prayer, especially Eucharistic Adoration and the Rosary; the beginning of a new passion for your faith and a newfound willingness to live and share that faith with others; a chance to ask the big questions and hear some big answers and discern your vocations in the process. Beware: those wonderful things may just happen to you!

We Aussies have some wonderful things to offer the world. We come from a land blessed with extraordinary natural beauty and resources, an affluent economy, a peaceful, democratic polity, a well-established Church still young enough to recall its missionary history, and with a culture of vibrant hope and youthful energy. Many lay people, clergy and religious are active in works of evangelisation and catechesis, education, healthcare, welfare, youth ministry and parish life. We have a lot of good news to tell the world about the progress of the Gospel in Australia.
 
Yet the Church in Australia is also confronted with a range of cultural and spiritual challenges such as individualism, consumerism and isolation. Sometimes we are misunderstood by the media and other institutions. There are many ideologies and philosophies of life around which are opposed to the Gospel and which tend to push Christianity to the margin. Many people are disoriented about what to believe and what is right and wrong, and they live in a kind of ‘spiritual desert’. As a result God and the Church, human life and love, marriage and family, justice, ecology and peace: all these things are sometimes insufficiently reverenced by Aussies. Attendance at Mass and Confession, and priestly, religious and married vocations need to be reinvigorated down under. We need to rediscover our Catholic identity and mission, to build up faith and community, to respond to the Holy Spirit’s summons to a new evangelization in our country.

Here with us today are many of the bishops of our country and their very presence on this pilgrimage, with many of our younger priests, is a tribute to the faith and hope and love of the Church in Australia for you. At the Synod of Oceania the bishops said they wanted the young people of our part of the world to know “that they are a vital part of the Church today, and that Church leaders are keen to find ways to involve young people more fully in the Church’s life and mission. Young Catholics are called to follow Jesus: not just in the distant future as adults, but right now as maturing disciples.” Our late great pope, John Paul II, responded with his hope for you, which I am sure his successor Pope Benedict shares: “May our young people [in Australia] always be drawn to the overwhelmingly attractive figure of Jesus, and stirred by the challenge of the Gospel’s sublime ideals! Then they will be empowered to take up the active apostolate to which the Church is now calling them, and play their part joyfully and energetically in the life of the Church at every level.” (Ecclesia in Oceania §44)

How is that going to happen? Well, first of all, it will require a new generation of apostles, of people on fire with faith and hope and love. You need the God who is in his Church and the Church of God needs you! If 2,000+ young people come back to Aus on fire with faith you could change our country for the better in all sorts of ways.

But what if instead of 2,000 young Aussies, 200,000 were here? We’ve got real quality here today. And we’ve got the biggest numbers we’ve ever brought to a World Youth Day from Australia. Like those who have gone to previous World Youth Days I am confident that on your return you will share with others your enthusiasm for this Pilgrimage of Faith and your own renewed attachment to Christ and his Church. But we’ve all got friends and family we wish were here with us. We all know people who could have benefited enormously from this opportunity. The problem is: it’s not easy to bring 200,000 young Aussies across the world.

So, we thought, if we can’t bring 200,000 young Aussie to the World, why not bring the World to the 200,000 Aussies? Why not have World Youth Day in Australia? So I thought I would let you in on a secret. I thought I would show you the video we made for the Vatican and the Pope as part of our bid to host the next World Youth Day. Though it is short, it is testament to two years of thorough preparation and hard work by Cardinal Pell and a team of people to whom we should be very grateful. I hope you will be as proud of it as I am. [Bid video shown here.]

We hope that on Sunday the Holy Father will announce Sydney as the host city for the next World Youth Day, in three years from now. We’ve got good places for you at the Vigil and the Final Mass with the Pope. We want you to be in the spotlight not just so you’ll be able to see everything and be close to the Holy Father, but also because we are proud of you and we want to show you off! If the Pope does announce Sydney and Australia at the end of the Angelus after the Final Mass, your group leaders will distribute T-shirts for you to wear, and flags and banners for you to wave, welcoming the world to Sydney in July 2008.

There are over 6,500 reporters in Cologne at the moment and that means 6,500 cameras and microphones will be focused on you and your excitement immediately after the Pope makes the announcement—if it is Sydney he announces. There will be millions of viewers back home and around the world! Pray hard for this, this week. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t brag about it. I know you will do us proud.

God willing it will be Australia. If it comes, be ready to party big time. Be ready for the biggest gathering in the history of our country in July 2008. Bigger than the Olympics. And much more important, because it is for God. A chance to change the face of our country. A chance to renew our Church. A chance for your generation to really make a difference. You will be able to tell future generations that you were there when it all began: when the Holy Father announced Sydney 2008, the beginning of really great things for our Church and our land. What a privilege! But for now you are our ambassadors to the young people of the world here in Cologne and to the young people of Australia in the next three years.

The Church in Australia is ready, willing and able. Our governments, Federal, State and Local have been enormously supportive of our bid. You saw in the video what a great commitment our Prime Minister has made to our bid: the Ambassador of Australia to Germany, Her Excellency Pamela Fayle, is with us today and so let’s all thank our Commonwealth Government and our PM through her… We’ve also been blessed with extraordinary support from the State Government of New South Wales in putting together our bid and starting the preparations. They’ve been very generous and I want to pay tribute to our state Minister for Tourism and Big Events, Sandra Nori, who is with us this week and was with us when we presented our bid in Rome… We know we have the welcoming spirit, the organisational experience and the facilities in Australia to host a really great World Youth Day. Above all we have the two ingredients most essential for a successful World Youth Day: God and young people. We’ve got both in abundance in Australia. And we want to bring those two ingredients closer together: which could produce an explosion of grace more wonderful than any Sydney fireworks, for all the world to see.

What can World Youth Day mean? What will this one mean for you pilgrims? What can the next one mean for all Australia? That will be up to God and all of you. I have absolute confidence that we’ve got what it takes! Let’s commit ourselves now to making great things happen in 2008 and beyond!