I went to World Youth Day 2005. Before the event itself my group went up and down the Rhine by bus and boat and saw the sights as far south of Heidelberg, if I remember right. But that’s the problem: we saw so much so fast my memory of it, and of others I’ve talked to about it, is a blur. I do remember that we stayed a few nights in an old monastery founded by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and also visited a monastery of Bendictine sisters founded by St. Hildegard of Bingen. I also remember mass in Mainz Cathedral (or was it Worms Cathedral? See this is the problem. I remember what the Gospel reading was but not which historic cathedral it was). And of course there were all sorts of castles and old parts of cities and so forth.
Eventually we came to Cologne for World Youth Day itself. We stayed in groups of two to maybe five or six in the houses of local Germans. My host family didn’t speak any English and my German was very rudimentary, but we managed somehow.
The event itself was a mixed bag. There were events all over the place, far too much to do everything you wanted, and of what I did do there was too much to list here. Among the highlights in my mind was the tomb (the new one, that is, not the one where he was buried alive) of Bl. John Duns Scotus. And there was a Baroque church where even then (this is pre-Summorum Pontificum) what we now call the EF was said, though I just attended a talk of some sort there. Also there were some Roman ruins and a museum.
Cologne Cathedral had a steady flow of pilgrims going in and out. I went through once and saw the reliquary of the Three Magi, and also climbed a good way up one of the spires. Up close you could see the difference between the old original stone of the Cathedral and the post-WWII stone. They did a great job of restoring the building except for the stained glass, which was an ugly mid-20th century style except for the few Medieval windows that had survived.
There were also people all over the place handing out all kinds of things, from Rosaries or Magnificat books to ads for local businesses to Chick tracts. Anti-Catholic posters in English were plastered here and there.
Every morning there was a mass for English-speaking pilgrims, and talks and confession and whatever else. I was not very fond of the liturgy at these, with their electric guitars and such. But the question and answer session with a Filipino bishop was pretty cool. I remember him explaining and defending the Church’s position on contraception in response to a skeptical sounding question from one of the kids. Confessions were in the open air in the grass, with a chair for the priest and another for the penitent and a wide space in between these clusters. I got an Australian priest, if I judged his accent right.
One of the neatest things was meeting people from all over the world. We made a point of getting pictures taken with a group of Chaldean Catholics from Iraq, holding the American and Iraqi flags together. On the other hand it was awkward when a group of Australians started enthusiastically talking to us about the war, assuming that we like they were extremely enthusiastic about it and despised all these Europeans for being against it.
The Italians from Sardinia were amazed that I knew where their island was. Also they had brought large quantities of wine from their country because (as they said) they would not touch German wine, and they insisted we drink it with them. The bishop of Brooklyn greeted us like we were old friends. The pilgrims from Kazakhstan wanted to educate us about their country. Everywhere you looked there were priests, bishops, and men and women in many different kinds of religious habits just walking around among the crowd. First Aid tents were set up with big red Maltese crosses on them, for indeed they were run by the Knights of Malta.
There was a part of the pilgrimage that actually walked. I remember being disappointed to see some of the other pilgrims pulling up and smashing sugar beets in a farmer’s field along the way just for fun. I wonder what that farmer thought of us good Catholic kids when he saw that.
Pope Benedict showed up halfway through the event. I got to see him fairly close up as he was driven down a street in his open Popemobile, waving to the crowd that lined the street to greet him. For the conclusion of the event everyone gathered at Marienfeld (Mary’s Field) just outside the city. There was some kind of vigil in the evening, though we couldn’t see what was going on very well and people weren’t paying attention very closely around me. I remember someone juggling fire while the blessed sacrament was exposed, and wondering if Pope Benedict felt the same way about that as I did.
I didn’t sleep that night. Instead my friend and I, who had spent most of World Youth Day together doing the same things, together with his father did something rather bad. It did not occur to me that it was wrong until afterwards. My friend and his father had done this with some other people at the Toronto World Youth Day, and I just followed their lead. While most people were asleep we left our designated place and snuck up to the very front of the crowd. Later some people doing the same thing somehow got in front of us, but we still had an excellent view of the Papal mass the next morning.
The whole thing was not, for me, an especially spiritually transformative experience. I’ve gone on retreats close to home that were more significant in that way. It was not the primary adventure of my life either. I’ve had more real adventure (with things like life-threatening peril) in other places from Russia to Rotterdam Junction, NY. But the experience of so many people from all over the world and so many states of life, all in that Catholic context and a historic European setting, and seeing the Pope on top of all the rest, that was like nothing else I’ve ever seen.
