WYD Kraków 2016

In the summer of 2016, from 24 July to 5 August, two full coaches left the parish of Sant Mateu for World Youth Day in Kraków, in the homeland of St John Paul II, who started these gatherings. On board were around a hundred young people from different groups and parishes, and once again they had with them letters from Lolek, who introduced them to his land and gave them advice to make the pilgrimage easier.

Ars and Munich

The journey had stops that left their mark on them. In Ars they learnt the story of St John Mary Vianney, and they were struck by the fact that he spent more than twenty hours a day in the confessional. In Munich they held an all-night prayer vigil, in shifts, so as not to leave the Lord alone at any moment.

Campus Misericordiae

In Kraków they were taken in by families in their homes. They followed the Holy Father’s events, meditated on his words and accompanied him with songs and shouts of joy alongside other young people who shared their faith, especially at the vigil and the Mass at Campus Misericordiae. At the vigil, on the evening of 30 July, in front of the one million six hundred thousand young people who slept there, the Pope asked them to aim for the best:

“Dear young people, we didn’t come into this world to ‘vegetate’, to take it easy, to make our lives a sofa that lulls us to sleep. On the contrary, we came for something else: to leave a mark. It is very sad to go through life without leaving a mark.”

The way back

On the way back they couldn’t miss visiting Auschwitz: holding Our Lady’s hand, they prayed rosaries there for the persecuted and for their persecutors. The last stop was Paray-le-Monial, where the Sacred Heart of Jesus revealed himself to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, and they left with one certainty: Christ loves us with a human heart.

It was a journey that taught them to open up to others and to step outside their usual group. And the story with Poland didn’t end there: Pawel, a Pole they met at that WYD, was the one who, six years later, put them in touch with the Archdiocese of Kraków to prepare the pilgrimage to Częstochowa. As the chronicle says: “once more we will meet again, and this time leaving a mark”.