World Youth Day’s main focus are two saints who are both natives of Poland: Pope St. John Paul II and St. Faustina Kowalska. As is expected at World Youth Days, he will be rapturously greeted by young pilgrims, including Poles: a Win/Gallup survey last March showed 78 per cent of the country view him positively. Pope Francis sent his greetings to the youth in Poland in a July 19 video. Since then it has occurred in various cities throughout the world, typically every three years. Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the chapel himself in Krakow on July 30.
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The pope will also meet with 10 Holocaust survivors and will visit St. Maximilian Kolbe’s cell.
“For me, it is a great gift of the Lord to visit you”.
Addressing the people of Poland, the pope said that despite the trials and difficulties throughout their history, the Polish nation “has persevered through the power of faith, upheld by the maternal hands of the Virgin Mary”. “I am certain that my pilgrimage to the shrine of Czestochowa will immerse me in this proven faith and do me so much good”, he said. I thank the bishops and priests, the men and women religious, and the lay faithful, especially families, to whom I will symbolically bring the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
Fr Lombardi also said the Pope will celebrate a private rather than public Mass before having a personal “moment of silent pain, of compassion, of tears”.
Among the activists taking part in the Polish LGBT event alongside World Youth Day is Rev. Jim Mulcahy, a U.S.-born Jesuit, according to the group’s information, who “is an experienced pastor and spiritual father of many LGBT believers”.
The Pope closed his video by asking pilgrims to continue to pray for the event.
“We want to create a space in which they will feel safe and where they will find answers to issues facing them”, said Misza Czerniak, one of the organizers.
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“I think through photography as the quote goes you can tell a thousand words through a photograph and I think with photography it’s so instant hopefully I can take a photograph and within a few minutes it can be up on social media…”
