This morning, our Long Island pilgrims left on their pilgrimage walk through the streets of Sydney to Randwick Racecourse. It’s about a 2.5 mile walk with tens of thousands of other pilgrims, all praying, singing, and chanting, to the spot where they’ll join Pope Benedict for an evening vigil, sleep outside under the stars, and attend the World Youth Day closing Mass with the pope in the morning.

I remember the overnight pilgrimage walk from my first World Youth Day, in Denver way back in 1993, when I was the same age as many of our younger Long Island pilgrims. I remember my legs hurting from the distance and my back hurting from carrying my backpack and sleeping bag the whole way. I remember the August heat and thinner air of the Mile High city making everything seem more difficult. I remember it raining during the evening vigil. I remember freezing during the night and being exhausted the next day from lack of sleep. I remember waiting for hours on line to use the bathroom and get food. I remember one member of my group being rushed to the medical tent after fainting from the heat and dehydration.

Sounds fun, right? Well, that’s not all I remember about World Youth Day’s arguably most memorable event. I remember singing and cheering and chanting along the way for the United States, for other countries, for the pope. I remember playing cards, making friends, laughing and praying as we sat on our sleeping bags waiting for the afternoon to turn into night and for the vigil to begin. I remember staying up all night for maybe the second or third time in my life and sharing thoughts and dreams with my friends. I remember all of Cherry Creek State Park being woken by “Good morning, pilgrims!” being shouted from the loudspeakers. I remember screaming and cheering and waving our banner as Pope John Paul’s helicopter did a fly-over before landing for the closing Mass. I remember the double rainbow I saw on the walk back. And most of all, I remember thinking that this was the coolest sleepover I had ever been a part of.

Throughout this week, I’ve been honest with all the teens and young adults who have asked me what the overnight is like. I told them that it’s rough. I told them that it’s a challenge. But I also told them that it’s amazing and that there’s probably nothing else they’ll ever do in their lives that’s like it. You almost can’t describe it, although I think that 15 years after World Youth Day in Denver, it’s probably still the coolest sleepover I’ve ever been a part of.

The one thing I’ve noticed that’s different about this World Youth Day is that there aren’t as many pilgrims as in the past, which is actually not at all discouraging.

The reasons why are obvious – it’s not for lack of wanting to be here. It’s not that there are fewer young people who are excited about being Catholic than there were in 2005. It’s that it’s a very long trip (20 plus hours from New York) and it’s a pretty expensive one. For the 150,000 who showed up for the opening Mass and the 500,000 who lined the streets to welcome Pope Benedict to World Youth Day on Thursday, I can guarantee there were many times more at home with the desire but not the means to come.

And maybe my perception is off a bit, as well. In Germany in 2005, we stayed in Dusseldorf, while most of the main events were a half-hour train ride away in Cologne, so we spent a lot of time traveling between cities, packed like sardines into trains and buses. This time, we’re right in the heart of World Youth Day, just a five minute walk from Darling Harbour, the jumping off point for most of the events. The transportation this time around doesn’t seem as packed. But at the same time, there was hardly room to move at the concert at Barangaroo following the Stations of the Cross tonight.

In the grand scheme of things, numbers are almost irrelevant. While there may seem to be fewer pilgrims in Sydney than in Cologne three years ago, the World Youth Day spirit is the same. Whether it’s 50 pilgrims or 500,000, they are all young, they are all excited to be here, and they all can’t wait to share and celebrate their faith with each other and with the world. For all the Catholics who couldn’t make it, I’m thrilled by those I see – so many from the United States and Canda, so many from Europe, so many who sacrificed to make the long trek to share in their faith with their brothers and sisters in the Land Down Under. Anyone who says the future of the Catholic Church is in jeopardy need only to look to the crowds in this city, chanting “Benedetto!,” singing hymns on the street, greeting anyone and everyone as an old friend. They need only know that pilgrims from around the globe will bring this spirit and the World Youth Day message of hope and unity back to their respective homes, to know that the Church of the future has already taken root and is happening now, in Sydney, in our parishes at home, behind the scenes and right in front of our eyes.  

The city of Sydney and Australia as a whole have been nothing but welcoming to the World Youth Day pilgrims.

Obviously, there have been some protests of our presence and the pope’s presence, but my overall impression is that the Land Down Under is thrilled to have us. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke at the Opening Mass, welcoming the young people as “pilgrims of peace.” Throughout the city, the streets are lined with red, blue, orange, and yellow World Youth Day 2008 banners. The ads on some of the bus stop shelters read “Caution: More pedestrians crossing during World Youth Day.” At catechesis on Wednesday, a man from Perth welcomed me to Sydney, even though he himself was a visitor, having driven five days across the continent to get there. At Bondi Beach that night, two college-aged Sydneysiders (as they’re called) told me and another young woman from our group how excited they were to have us here, to have so many visitors to their city, and to see so much diversity in language and culture because of it. The entire staff at the hotel we’re staying at even has a new uniform for the week – official World Youth Day T-shirts. Every morning, the pope and this event are on the front page of every newspaper, and every day, Sky News has live television coverage of World Youth Day happenings. Even the rain stopped and the sun came out for the week of our pilgrimage.

And on July 17, the city of Sydney and Australia as a whole welcomed Pope Benedict to World Youth Day. Because we had such great seats for the Opening Mass, we ended up at the spillover point for the pope’s welcoming address, but people – not just pilgrims, but Sydneysiders as well – lined the streets between Barangaroo, where he gave his address, and Hyde Park, standing three or four deep. They were all there to watch his motorcade through the city, cheering and singing as if it were the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York, or as if Pope Benedict were a rock star, which at World Youth Day, he kind of is.