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Catholic Diocese of Sandhurst
Year in Review 2016
Our World Youth Day Pilgrims
Enjoy Poland
World Youth Day Review
by Brayden McGregor
Where do I start? I mean it literally felt like the whole trip was condensed into less than a day. It was
absolutely jam-packed with travel, sightseeing, checking in, checking out, prayer, catechesis, concerts,
meeting people and getting through extremely large crowds for absolutely anything you wanted to do.
For me, to be completely honest, the World Youth Day idea was put into my head by two amazing girls
who I very fortunately work with, Zoe Boldiston and Georgia Perkins.
At first I was like as if, there is no way we will be allowed to do that during work, but I said, “Yeah
sounds good, a paid holiday to travel overseas sounds like awesome fun!” I look back on that time
now and reminisce on how narrow-minded and plain stupid that type of thinking was. Because for
me, World Youth Day was so much more than a holiday or a paid break overseas, it was an emotional
and spiritual journey that has opened my eyes to things that I would not have seen at all without this
experience.
A lot of people would attest that I am a very sarcastic, humour-loving enthusiastic person who doesn’t
really take many things seriously. That includes my faith and anything to do with it. That is one thing
that changed dramatically when I went to World Youth Day. The moments that you have at World
Youth Day is something that literally cannot be explained and, if you try to explain it, then you simply
just do not give it the slightest bit of justice.
For example, one of the most eye-opening experiences I had was at the Opening Mass. Let me set the
scene for you here. It is a gloomy, dark day. The whole day it is pouring rain, even as we walk to Blonia
Park with our ponchos saturated by water, it is still pouring.
Guess what happened as soon as we sat down and waited for the Pope? It began to stop raining. To
me, this was already a sign of God doing one of his acts of greatness, sheltering 2.5 million people from
uncomfortable rain.
What strengthened this idea that God was there with us throughout that whole Mass was the fact
that, although the whole day was gloomy and rainy, throughout the Mass at two particular times,
S
andhurst Diocese pilgrims enjoyed World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, from July 26-31. Thirty
Sandhurst pilgrims joined 3000 other young Australians and more than 2 million young people
from around the globe at the week-long event. Pilgrims prepared for the adventure with a series of
formation days in the months leading up to the event, which they shared with 350 young people from
the Sale and Ballarat Dioceses and the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
The Victorian pilgrims had had several formation days, one in Melbourne and two in Shepparton. On
June 19 pilgrims had their last formation session, led by David Walker from the Sandhurst Catholic
Education Office. It had a strong emphasis on Pope Francis’ letter to the young people heading to
World Youth Day. Formation days also included Polish language lessons, spiritual formation, learning
Polish history and participating in a team-building ‘amazing race’ around Melbourne.
Many of the young people from Sandhurst also enjoyed a pre-WYD pilgrimage through Rome, or
walked in the footsteps of Pope St John Paul II in Poland.
WORSHIP & PRAYER