You can help

What: Rummage sale with lots of bargains for new or returning college students, to help pay for local youths’ recent trip to Madrid for World Youth Day

When: 8 a.m. to noon Saturday

Where: St. James Catholic Church, 14th and B streets

Imagine 2 million mostly young people packed into a hot airfield outside Madrid, Spain, for a massive outdoor sleepover, when looming dark clouds turn into prolonged thunderstorms and heavy downpours … and no one leaves.

That’s exactly what happened in August during World Youth Day, an event started in 1985 by Pope John Paul II and now held every few years at different sites around the world. The Catholic event draws millions of young people from every continent to share their cultures and faith with one another.

This year, a contingent from St. James Catholic Church in Davis attended, and members were among the throng on the airfield that stormy night when the rain started pouring down, even as Pope Benedict XVI began addressing the assembled crowd.

The pope’s advisers suggested perhaps he should leave, said St. James youth minister Christina Fenn. But he was having none of it.

“The pope was there and we were there and nobody was leaving,” Fenn said.

“It was an amazing experience,” she added.

Fenn, St. James pastor Father Bong Rojas, and a group of some 20 young people and chaperones from St. James made the two-week trip to Spain in August.

They spent their first week in the city of Segovia, north of Madrid, where they stayed in a parish hall while doing a variety of activities in the city. Known as “Days in the Diocese,” the program gives youths a chance to experience cultural exchanges and diversity with youth groups from all over the world.

From there, the St. James group traveled to Madrid for workshops, worship and more. Everywhere they went, the group found themselves in massive throngs of young people, usually under a hot sun, and yet everywhere, peace reigned.

Even though there was nearly always a “party-like atmosphere,” Rojas said, everyone remained positive, with none of the disturbances or violence one might expect when millions of youths gather in one place.

“It was beautiful to see everyone’s excitement,” Fenn said, “and how much fun they were having.”

The journey to Madrid started nearly a year ago and required a great deal of organizing and fundraising. Early on, the group determined they would need to raise $50,000 to take everyone who wanted to go. For the next 10 months, they held fundraiser after fundraiser, and by the time the trip rolled around, they had collected $40,000.

They hope to cover the balance with a few more fundraisers, including a rummage sale that will take place Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon at St. James, corner of B and 14th streets.

All year long, the whole St. James parish was involved in the fundraising, Rojas said, and the end result was a lot of community building going on at the same time.

The St. James travelers took a piece of their community with them to Spain in the form of “prayer shirts.”

Parishioners wrote short, personal prayers on plain white T-shirts that youth group members then wore during World Youth Day events, including during that rainy worship service presided over by Pope Benedict.

The main purpose of World Youth Day, Rojas said, “is the emphasis on unity… that we’re not alone.”

And that despite the constant portrayal of youth as “the next generation,” he said, “they are actually the generation of now.”

It was the first World Youth Day attended by most of the group. Fenn had previously attended the Cologne, Germany, event six years ago and Rojas the World Youth Day in 1995 in the Philippines, an event that drew a record-breaking 5 million people.

But virtually everyone who attended this year’s event plans to attend the next one in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

“As we were parting ways,” Fenn said, “rather than saying, ‘Goodbye,’ everyone said, ‘See you in Rio.’

“We’re all on board for it,” she said, adding that “a lot of people see ‘living your faith’ as really dull, but this is very different.”

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or (530) 747-8051.

Spain2w

Young people from St. James Catholic Church get to know each other during an overnight vigil on an airfield near Madrid during World Youth Day festivities this summer. They’re wearing the “prayer shirts” on which St. James parishioners had written short prayers. Courtesy photo

Spain1w

Young people from St. James Catholic Church get to know each other during an overnight vigil on an airfield near Madrid during World Youth Day festivities this summer. They’re wearing the “prayer shirts” on which St. James parishioners had written short prayers. Courtesy photo

Comments

comments