World Youth Day: Opportunity for New Evangelization

Father Thomas Rosica, director of the television network Salt and Light, and organizer of World Youth Day in Toronto, speaks to us from Sydney on the secret of the success of these days.

"World Youth Day is one of the greatest inventions of the Church for the new evangelization, and it was the genius of Pope John Paul II to give these very important moments to the whole Church and to the world because it's a chance for all of us, those of us who are young, and those that are not so young to really celebrate our faith, to be public about it and to realize that we're not alone. So the genius of bringing young people together from around the world, to really celebrate our Catholic-Christian identity is a wonderful experience. It's a festival, it's a moment of joy, it's a moment of solidarity, and it's a moment that creates Catholic community, it's networking at its best, so what's going on in Australia these days is extremely wonderful."

Fr. Rosica makes clear that it is not the number of people in attendance that makes World Youth Day a success.

"These events were never about numbers, from the beginning. Perhaps we make mistakes if we try to compare events to Rome, the Jubilee, or to Manila, or to Cologne, because in fact the greater the numbers, the more difficult it is for the message to pass, to go through. This World Youth Day is a very good number of people, it's the whole world that's represented, it's a moment of faith, of growth, of teaching, of celebrating, and of being together, so we should be very careful."