John Paul II’s Legacy Lives On in World Youth Day

The Wall Street Journal, 10 August 2023

In Lisbon, a million-plus prove the Gospel isn’t wasted on the young.

Thirty years ago this week, a pilot who had flown combat missions in Vietnam struggled to keep his chopper under control in Denver. As he delivered Pope John Paul II to Mile High Stadium, the crowd’s thunderous cheers created turbulence. The pilot was bringing a pilgrim of peace, but the experience strangely reminded him of war.

It was World Youth Day in August 1993. That massive meeting changed the papacy and the Catholic Church, restoring confidence that the hearts of young people could be touched by the Gospel. Pope Francis is a very different kind of pope, but there he was Sunday in Lisbon, with 1.5 million pilgrims for his fourth gathering, after Rio de Janeiro (2013), Kraków, Poland (2016), and Panama City (2019). The next one, he announced, will be in Seoul in 2027.

WYD is the fruit of John Paul’s remarkable capacity to understand and inspire the young. He insisted that “no one invented the World Youth Days; it was the young people themselves who created them.” WYD is a permanent part of the church’s calendar and one of the largest religious events on the planet. So much so that after Pope Benedict XVI abdicated in 2013, he explained that his physical incapacity to travel to Brazil had influenced his decision.

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