G’day
Tom Gallagher and Daniel O’Brien here reporting on our pilgrimage to Germany where we celebrated the 20th World Youth Day. For two weeks in August we represented St. Liborius Parish in Germany. It was a very eye opening experience seeing thousands of Catholic youth from all over  the world coming together to celebrate the same belief.

The 2005 World Youth Day theme was ‘We come to Worship him’ which comes from the gospel of Matthew retelling how the three wise men traveled a great distance to worship Jesus. Together with 72 other pilgrims from the Sandhurst dioceses we traveled 24 hours on Malaysian Airlines to help celebrate our Catholic beliefs with the rest of the world.

We toured parts of the host country when we arrived in Germany. The first town we stopped over was Esslingen. We were all billeted out into the local parish people’s homes. They were a very hospitable bunch, and they definitely loved food! Ice cream was a favourite. We went to mass with the local people and obviously it was said in the local language, German. Even, though the mass was in a different language you could still understand the different parts of the mass. It was amazing to see that the other side of the world they celebrate basically the same way we do.

The locals in Esslingen were very proud to have us visit. One night we had a community dinner, disco and bonfire in our honour. Once we got to know all the locals in Esslingen it was time to move closer to Cologne.

Our next stop over was Portz. It was a long bus ride to get there from Esslingen; luckily we were able to travel on the autobahns! In Ports we were thankful to once again be billeted into the local homes. We did lots of activities. We walked through the streets, and along the Rhine, re-enacting the Stations of the Cross. That was very worthwhile experience.

On Thursday the open arrived in Cologne and there was people everywhere, the whole town had turned up to barrack for him.  One of the nights we all traveled into Cologne to see the Dom. Now the Dom is Cologne is the main cathedral. I would reckon it was about 10 times as big as the Bendigo Cathedral. It was huge! They had taken out all the seats so more people could travel on in and have a look.

Our group said a prayer at the entrance before we went in. It was dark inside and musicians played classical music all night. There were thousands of people that night and we nearly all got trapped in the train station. We didn’t get home that night until 2am.

We then came to the eve of the big one, the World Youth Day Mass. Some of the energetic people of the group got up at 5am to travel to a place called Marienfeld here the mass was held. The Marienfeld which means Mary‘s field in German, and this was the site for the outdoor mass.

We had a group of people who got up at 5am, deciding that they needed to leave early to save our seats for the mass. Lucky that we didn’t have to do that every time we wanted to go to mass. Thus, the Sandhurst group got a really good camping ground right up the front of the field, allowing to camp outside for one night under the stars. Some didn’t get much sleep, praying that it wouldn’t rain.

The Pope said that there were 1.4 Million youthful people gathered at this outdoor mass! It was very big> His holiness could see us all from the altar which was on top of a mountain. This mountain was built from soil from every part of the world. At the mass we, every 1.4 million each received Holy Communion, it was pretty special.

After the big mass we started our trek back to the bus which then took us to Paderborn, this is where we would have a post WYD retreat. It was much needed. The place where the Sandhurst group stayed was at a youth hostel. We could view all the sights of Paderborn including the St. Liborius Cathedral. Now the St. Liborius is the name of my own parish of Eaglehawk back in Bendigo. It was just as every bit good as our church and even had an underground Crypt.

Coming to the end we all arrived back safely in Australia with the thought of knowing that the next World Youth Day, which is to happen in 2008, will be held in Sydney Australia. So, hopefully St. Liborius Parish can get on board. We’ll see you there.