WYD Lisbon 2023

On 25 June 2023, Cardinal Joan Josep Omella presided over the commissioning Mass. He encouraged them to look at the cross in moments of difficulty, because there they would find Christ and, at his feet, Our Lady. That night, the three priests who would accompany them gave them their crosses, and the next day, at three in the morning, they set out from the parish of Sant Rafael carrying a cross that would go with them every day. As well as meeting Christ, they wanted to raise money to restore the parish of Sant Rafael: every kilometre, one euro; every euro, one more stone. The first chronicle put it like this: “Yes, what we are starting today is madness. But it is a madness of love”.

A day on the way

The days had a rhythm that repeated itself: the alarm at three in the morning (some days at two, to escape the sun), the first hour walking in silence and prayer, the breakfast stop with spiritual reading and the rosary, and the arrival. In the afternoon, what the chronicles called the trident: adoration, meditation and Mass. Then dinner, a get-together with guitars, and Compline. Every day there was a letter from Moses in the pilgrim’s book, and Fr Ferran, Fr Toni and Fr Bernat preached. The logistics team, with Luis, a seminarian, and Jaime, had everything ready: one day they ended up loading 57 Decathlon air mattresses.

Along the coast and across La Mancha

In the first weeks they followed the coast: the Garraf, Sitges crossed singing from one end to the other, the wind on the beaches of Tarragona, the rice fields of the Ebro delta with their mosquitoes, Peñíscola. On 30 June, Auxiliary Bishop Javier Vilanova walked a stage with them and celebrated Mass for them in a small chapel surrounded by pines. One rainy afternoon, Fr Toni had the idea of celebrating Mass inside a bungalow: the 55 pilgrims in a space meant for six, with “all the warmth of the first Christians in the catacombs”. From Sagunto onwards they left the sea, and inland came the toughest stages: one of 44 kilometres, with the alarm at two in the morning, and the “triad of death”, three stages in a row of around forty kilometres each. On 15 July, after twenty days, they celebrated having already done half of the pilgrimage.

The family of the Church

If one thing comes up in every chronicle, it is the welcome: parish priests who opened the church and stayed for dinner, parishioners who let the girls shower in their homes, sports halls and ice creams that fell from the sky. In Vinaròs and in Badajoz, the Little Sisters of the Abandoned Elderly welcomed them with a party, and in Tomelloso they slept in a Caritas centre that takes in seasonal workers. In Agudo, on 21 July, the mayor, Maribel, was waiting for them, and some sixty people from the village came to adoration and Mass; Carmen, a catechist, told them she had watched the commissioning Mass on 13tv. That evening they wrote: “we have received much more than we have given. Without a doubt, from now on Agudo will be our second home”. In Orellana la Vieja, the parish priest, Don Eugenio, knew the Virolai by heart and organised a collection for the rebuilding of Sant Rafael.

Portugal

On 26 July twenty more pilgrims arrived from Barcelona to join them, and on the 29th, after Badajoz, they crossed the border. In Vila Fernando, their first home in Portugal, they celebrated Mass for the first time in a language that wasn’t their own, and the women of the village gave them handmade rosaries they had been preparing for six months. Portuguese television, RTP, filmed them arriving in Pavia; the police escorted them along the national road, and in Biscainho a “Benvinguts” (welcome) sign was waiting for them, written in Catalan and with the Sant Rafael logo.

Entering Lisbon

On 4 August they walked the last stage all together, the logistics team included: forty kilometres, many of them through industrial estates, because the outskirts of Lisbon never seemed to end. Half an hour from the cathedral some families were waiting for them and they prayed the rosary together; five hundred metres away they burst into “Dona toda tu vida”, which had already become the anthem of their pilgrimages, and in front of the cathedral they shouted “¡Esta es la juventud del Papa!”. The Mass of thanksgiving, packed tightly into the Blessed Sacrament chapel, brought more than one tear: “Many of us didn’t think we could do it, and here we are!”.

WYD

Then came the days of WYD. At the vigil, in sector B08 of the campus, more than a million people adored Jesus on their knees and in silence, and the Pope told them that falling doesn’t matter, that the only problem would be staying down. At the Sunday Mass, the Gospel of the Transfiguration left them with a question for the journey home: what will have changed in us, and what will we take home? The coach back stopped for the night in Talavera de la Reina, where the Augustinian nuns took them in.

“We come home renewed and converted; we hope you notice it in our service, in our joy and in our love for Jesus”, wrote Olga in the last chronicle, which closed the journal with a promise: it would open again, God willing, in Korea 2027.