World Youth Day in Rome.

Rome--They came as tourists, seeing the sights, dancing in the streets, and splashing in the fountains. They stayed as pilgrims, going through the bronze Holy Door into St. Peter's to show that they had really arrived, and completing the pilgrimage by praying in the other three Roman basilicas--St. Mary Major, St. John Lateran, and St. Paul's Outside the Walls. In Canada the National Post reported two comments which caught the sense of excitement, and the sense of reverence, which these pilgrims displayed. Alejo Sanchez of Mexico City said, "If you are Catholic, then you have to be in Rome this year. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to the Church." Sandra Spinelli from Milan said, "I can enjoy the wordly pleasures of Rome anytime. This year I am here for my soul."

The Holy Father asked the young people to open their hearts to Christ. As Marina Jimenez of the Post also reported, many of the young people did open their hearts in confession, one of the requirements for the plenary indulgence which a pilgrim may gain. In fact Marina described the world's biggest confessional-three hundred open booths set up in rows under giant white tents, in a vast open space called the Circo Massimo. Two thousand priests worked from dawn till nearly midnight to hear the confessions, in languages ranging all the way from Arabic to Tagalog and Turkish, of the tens of thousands who came seeking absolution.

Among the devotional activities was a solemn procession making the Way of the Cross through the streets of Rome. On the Saturday evening there was a prayer vigil at the Tor Vergata campus of Rome University, on the outskirts of the city, attended by about a million and a half people. A still larger number, estimated at about two million, took part in the concluding Mass on the following day.

2002 in Toronto

At the end of the Youth Day meetings came the news that the next such event will take place in Canada, in Toronto, in 2002. Toronto's Mayor Mel Lastman, Ontario Premier Mike Harris, Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino, and other interested parties, were on hand for the announcement. The members of these delegations expressed admiration for the Pope, though Lastman's comment that "There seems to be a lot of church-going here" and his prediction that the youth conference "would showcase Toronto to the world" hardly suggested that Toronto in 2002 would rival Rome from a devotional aspect.

The coverage in the Toronto press was also revealing. Both the Post and the Star covered the event generously. The Globe, on the other hand, carried only two tiny news briefs, one with the grotesque heading "Catholic jamboree gets Rome hopping." The Sun carried brief reports, all of them concentrating on the business and money which the 2002 gathering will bring to Toronto.

In the Hamilton Spectator, Robert Howard wrote that "it is distasteful that Premier Mike Harris and Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman reacted as if they had won a convention, albeit a huge one, of cheesemakers or auto dealers." They reacted solely on the basis of the convention's economic and world-status benefits. Their focus was on spinoff and how it might help Toronto's bid for the 2008 Olympics. This "Special Olympics of the Soul...is on an entirely different level than a trade show or convention," the editorial concluded.