Our People

Holy Father's Meeting with Benefactors and Sponsors

Cathedral House

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
20/7/2008

Holy Father, It is with great joy that I present to you the World Youth Day staff. They have been working – some for four years now, some for a shorter time – to prepare for this wonderful week of grace which we have experienced with you.

May I present to you our Executive, Chancery and Polding Centre Team: these people have coordinated and supported the leadership of WYD all the way.

May I introduce to you our Evangelisation and Catechesis Department and our Archdiocesan WYD Committee: they prepared the youth of Sydney, of Australia and beyond through many programmes of pastoral preparation, including the Activ8 the Parish materials, the Holy Hour of Power campaign, the ePilgrimage and many other activities before, during and after WYD week.

I present to you the JCI teams: since our wonderful celebration with you in St Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday of 2006 and after the journey through Africa and Oceania, these young people have taken the World Youth Day Cross and Icon to every corner of this land where it has been venerated by around half a million of our people and where it has brought the promise of reconciliation through the cross of Christ to many more.

May I introduce to you our Operations Department: they embraced with enthusiasm the largest planning and operations task every undertaken by the Church in Australia – and in many ways the biggest ever undertaken by any group in Australia – with extraordinary professionalism and dedication, and brought to fruition the big events of this week past.

I present to you the Pilgrim Services Department: they ensured that our pilgrims were registered, fed, accommodated, transported and assisted in every way so that our pilgrims experienced true Aussie – and Christian – hospitality.

May I introduce to you our Business Partnerships Department: they helped to ensure that we were provided with the services we needed, as well as sponsorship and other assistance; they gave us entre to partners we hope to have well into the future, some of whom have been deeply moved by the message of World Youth Day; and they also ensured that our city was well-dressed for the occasion!

I present to you the Liturgy Department: they planned, supervised and saw through all the liturgical elements of the week, from the hundreds of Masses at the catechetical sites, through the various events with Your Holiness, culminating in that most beautiful and moving celebration of the Holy Sacrifice this morning.

May I introduce to you the Communications Department: they ensured that the Good News about World Youth Day was shared with journalists and the wider world and helped press us forward into the 21st century tools for a new evangelisation.

I would also like to recognize that His Eminence Cardinal Pell has been our leader and inspiration at every stage of the bidding, planning, preparation and execution of this World Youth Day. He is a big man, Your Holiness, with a big heart and big dreams to match. Today he has brought one of those dreams to realisation and in the process drawn us all with him to Christ.

Holy Father, these wonderful people have poured out their time, their talents and energies, their hearts and souls to make this World Youth Day happen. I am so very proud of them and grateful to them.

Finally, on behalf of the leadership team and all the staff of World Youth Day, may I thank Your Holiness for your wisdom and courage in granting the privilege of hosting World Youth Day to a country at the very end of the earth; for your generosity in coming all this way to bring us the Gospel of Hope; for the way you have shared your every minute with us; and for the assistance of your Council for the Laity, your Household, Liturgy, Security, Media and other officials, all of whom worked with us in planning and providing this week’s festivities. For many of us this will be the greatest activity for which we have worked in our lives and we are profoundly grateful that you made this possible for us. We pledge our continuing prayers for you: ad multos annos as a humble servant in the vineyard of the Lord. We pray Your Holiness that you address us and give us your blessing.