World Youth Day
The Office of Campus Ministry looks forward to the opportunity of a joyful and enriching experience for members of the Georgetown community at the next World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain in 2011!!
About World Youth Day...
Organized by the Catholic Church, World Youth Day is a gathering of young people from around the world in order to build bridges of friendship and hope between continents, peoples, and cultures. An initiative of Pope John Paul II, the first World Youth Day was held in Rome in 1986. Each year since, World Youth Day has been celebrated at a diocesan level on Palm Sunday, and every two to three years a massive international gathering celebrates World Youth Day in a different host city.
According to the organizers' website, World Youth Day allows "young people from throughout the world will make a pilgrimage in faith, meet, and experience the love of God. The young people have an opportunity to rediscover their baptismal calling and the centrality of the sacraments of the Eucharist and reconciliation, and so discover a new apostolic zeal to witness more fully the Gospel in the modern world."
To learn more about Georgetown's participation in World Youth Day 2008, click here.
About MAGiS...
MAGiS is a long-term project designed to foster Ignatian Spirituality in young adults, with the aim of producing leaders—people with a sense of God’s place in their lives and a capacity to do something to build a better world. MAGiS08 was the first major project under this ministry.
Did You Know...
...that World Youth Day is the largest youth gathering in the world? The 2005 gathering in Cologne, Germany attracted 435,000 registered pilgrims from 197 countries, 800 bishops and cardinals, and 7,000 international journalists. An incredible 1.2 million people attended the closing Mass.
...that Pope John Paul II was inspired to institute World Youth Day by his experience at the massive gatherings of young people in Rome celebrating the Youth Jubilee in 1984 and the United Nations International Year of Youth in 1985?
...that WYD 2008 was Pope Benedict's second World Youth Day as pope?
...that our 2008 team followed in the footsteps of other groups of students and staff who represented Georgetown at the World Youth Day gatherings in Paris in 1997, Rome in 2000, and Cologne in 2005?