More Than A Trip Down Under

World's largest confessional staged in Sydney
July 20, 2008
By Pauline Askin
SYDNEY (Reuters) - At most outdoor festivals the longest queues are generally for the portable toilets and bar but at World Youth Day in Sydney, the Catholic Church's version of Woodstock, one of the biggest queues is for confessing sins.

With some 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims attending WYD from July 15-20 the Church is staging the world's largest confessional, with more than 1,000 priests at anyone time hearing sins and dispensing penance at 250 locations.

"The notion in Sydney was to decentralise the celebration of reconciliation (confession). The groups received reconciliation in over 250 locations throughout greater Sydney," said Monsigneur Marc Caron, the man in charge of the mass confessional. With pilgrims from more than 170 nations, confessionals had to be organised not just geographically but also according to different languages, Caron told Reuters. "Some of the locations are from concert halls downtown to function halls to schools and churches. Those are assigned by language, the French have so many venues, we have a Norwegian venue, a Korean and so many Chinese venues," he said.

Organisers have tried to be attentive to the sensitivity of confession and ensure pilgrims do not overhear each other's sins. "Whilst we don't have sound proof venues, they are padded dividers between stalls and they are in locations where there is so much going on and background noise," said Caron.

"I've been to each of the locations and I think people's privacy is perfectly assured." Confessions are being heard for up to six hours a day. In order to avoid overloading the priests hearing confessions they are allotted a break every 90 minutes. Up to 4,000 priests are attending World Youth Day in one capacity or another and will lend an ear to hearing confessions.

"At any one time there could easily be 1,000 priests hearing confession," Caron said. "We're not keeping track of the numbers (of sinners), but at the main venue in Darling Harbour Convention Centre it's very steady all the time."

Caron said even if he knew he wouldn't be able to divulge the top 10 sins being confessed by young pilgrims. The Catholic Church hopes World Youth Day, the brainchild of the late Pope John Paul II, will revitalise the world's young Catholics.

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Cardinal Pell And The Holy Father At World Youth Day

Benedicto! Benedicto!

Welcome to the papal moshpit
Linda Morris

Religious Affairs Writer

and Josephine Tovey

July 14, 2008
"IT'S amazing … I felt lifted. He's like Jesus Christ on Earth," said Liba Vazquez, 17. It was worth waiting two hours in the cold for a glimpse of the Pope, she said. Her brother Amadeo said:

"Just seeing the Pope is something." Scores of pilgrims and cheering onlookers braved chilly conditions to catch a glimpse of the Pope's arrival and then lined the motorcade route from Richmond RAAF base all the way to his retreat at Kenthurst.

Maggie Llovet, a Spanish pilgrim who came with her Australian hosts, the Vazquez family from Glenhaven, was among 200 who gathered at the air base entrance. As the Pope was driven past she said pilgrims shouted "Long live the Pope" in different languages. "There was lots of singing, and big loud cheers. This is going to be a great experience," she said. The public were kept well away from the Pope, with the perimeter of the air base patrolled by Defence Force personnel, but they lined the fences and climbed trees for best vantage. When the jet touched down on time just before 3pm the public road outside the base turned into a car park. After a brief stay at the tarmac, the Pope's motorcade, which included three ambulances, was given a police escort to the Kenthurst Study Centre, a retreat run by Opus Dei, where he will recuperate over the next three days from his 23-hour flight from Rome, the longest foreign trip of his papacy. He begins his formal tour on Thursday.

His arrival drew solemn prayers and jubilant cheers from more pilgrims, and one group of onlooking neighbours raised a few stubbies. About 400 people gathered opposite the Study Centre in Pitt Town Road, with most people lucky enough to get a glimpse of the man himself, waving and smiling, as he whizzed down the winding street, accompanied by motorcycles and hovering helicopters.

Gerard Van Ommen Kloeke and his family were quietly murmuring the rosary behind police barricades on the side of the crowded street. The Canadian-born father of four, who lives in Sydney with his Australian wife, had seen the previous Pope at World Youth Day 1993 in Denver. "I wanted to give them [his children] the chance to experience that same excitment for themselves," he said. Mr Van Ommen Kloeke said he planned to hold up his youngest child as the pontiff cruised past, hoping she might be a "Pope magnet" and attract a wave.

When the motorcade finally passed there was no time for quiet reflection. The crowd burst to life, largely thanks to a cohort of about 50 teenage pilgrims from Spain, who erupted into cheers and began chasing the car down the street, chanting "Benedicto! Benedicto!"

Australian pilgrims could only look on and clap as the mood quickly changed into a football-fever style atmosphere. Police, who had been holding the public behind barricades, had no choice but to let the revelling crowds spill on to the streets to sing and dance and wave their World Youth Day flags. But it would not have been a proper start to the Pope's visit without some cynical Sydney-siders looking on. A group of neighbours gathered at the house opposite the Opus Dei retreat, making their way through a case of beer as they enjoyed their prime position.

"We're the welcoming party," said one man, raising his drink to the crowd. "Yeah, I'm thinking of converting," another yelled.

In Parramatta, Sydney's Maronite Christians turned out in force to welcome the leader of their branch of Catholicism. Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, along with about 100 other Maronite bishops and priests, presided over a Mass at Parramatta Stadium. The 20,000 strong crowd was made up of mostly Lebanese-Australian families, who had turned out for a rare glimpse of their spiritual leader, who many described as "our Pope". Bernadette Bousrama, one of the young volunteers at the event, had attended several other events over the previous week with the Patriarch. "It's been deadset amazing," she said. The Pope comes to a small outpost of Catholicism.

There are 5.12 million Catholics in Australia, comprising 25.8 per cent of the population.

But a dwindling number - less than 14 per cent - now regularly attend Mass. Pope Benedict XVI is largely a mystery to most Australians, says the papal biographer Paul Collins. "I think Australians are likely to see an old style European gentleman, an old style European intellectual," he said. "He showed in Cologne and the US he is able to relate to large crowds and take on some populist role, but that is not his natural style. He showed in the United States he had a good understanding of pluralistic democracy, which his predecessors lacked. "He will have difficulty with the Australian character, our understated way of operating and our slightly ironic way of existence. It could be unfortunate if he reads that as a lack of religiosity,

I simply do not buy the notion that Australians are a secular lot of materialistic slobs.

We are not like Americans, who are ostentatiously religious, so we could be easy to misread."

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