WYD BLOG: December 21 – Pre-Immersion

A dozen young Catholics from the Archdiocese and a squad of adults participants, including Archbishop Christopher Prowse, will be attending World Youth Day (WYD) in Panama early next year.

The official World Youth Day activities run from January 22-27, but the team will be departing from Canberra ahead of that on January 18. One of the adult participants, Fr Adrian Chan, will be submitting regular blogs leading up to and throughout World Youth Day. Here is his first entry.

We are all set to leave for Mexico from Canberra on the 18th of January at 8.15 am.

We will be spending about 3 days in Mexico including Guadalupe. Thereafter we shall travel to Panama city for a full week of the World Youth Day activities.

I’m looking forward to seeing Pope Francis on the fifth, sixth and seventh day of the World Youth Day events. A day after the finale mass with Pope Francis, we will be heading to Houston for two days of spiritual retreat and regrouping. And then, back to Canberra.

There are about twenty of us from teachers to youth ministers to priests and our Archbishop Christopher on this pilgrimage. In the last briefing in the beginning of December, we expressed our hopes and aspirations for this World Youth Day in encountering God at a profound level and in the “thin places” of life where heaven and earth meets.

I hope to blog these in various forms depending on holy inspiration: personal thoughts, wefie, interviews, comments from the Archbishop, photos, etc.

Related articles:

• Archdiocese team prepares for World Youth Day
• World Youth Day preparations continue