BRISBANE, Australia (UCAN) — Australia is preparing for World Youth Day (WYD), expected to draw 500,000 young people, including 125,000 from overseas. About 2,000 of some 10,000 Asians among them are to come from the Philippines.
Despite organizers’ hopes to keep the prayer focus spot on, showbiz fans say the July 15-20 event will outdo the 2000 Olympics, Australia’s largest ever international event. Marketeers regard it as a “religious” Olympiad likely to raise A$231 million for the local economy.
Even the slow processing of visas for international participants causes little concern because the government claims to showcase Australia at WYD.
Amid such pageant-making trends, WYD’s focus on “Witnessing to the Spirit” becomes all the more important. True, about 300 bishops are due to run catechetical workshops on this theme. More importantly, the togetherness vibes can offer young participants space for Spirit-led interactive catechesis, energizing them for a witness beyond the biennial assembly.
Early signs of the Spirit are already evident even amid a tough drive to enroll WYD volunteers in a country where youth volunteerism is low. One group is networking with host families to offer home-grown hospitality and exposure to overseas pilgrims. Moreover, some 400 Catholic student groups reportedly are raising funds for 3,600 participants from Oceania. The project may sponsor youths from East Timor and the Indonesian province of Papua. If all goes well, it may extend to 6,000 pilgrims from 19 nations, including some in Asia.
From July 5, Melbourne-based “Green WYD” hopes to motivate WYD participants toward greater care of creation. Its program, affiliated to the international network “Young People for Development,” will involve youths from Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Sydney-based “MAGiS 08” plans to gather young people from across the globe in the lead-up to WYD for its own July 5-27 program on Ignatian spirituality. It hopes to involve 2,000 young Asians and Australians in experiments in living Gospel challenges.
No less significant is “Reasons for Hope,” a retreat in Melbourne for young adults beginning as early as late April.
Many of these programs target spirituality-based social animation. And coming alongside Australia’s refocus on Asia after the 2007 election, they look to Asia as the future Church.
Young Asians can learn from the political culture behind Australia’s post-election transfer of power without terror or bloodshed. But youths from nations grappling with various forms of discrimination will watch for the outcome of the Aussie government’s apology for exploiting Indigenous People in the past. Youths of both continents will find WYD a moment of grace to reflect jointly on the Asia-Pacific heritage of Aboriginality, Adivasi, Burakumin, Dalit and tribal peoples.
Asian youths’ dynamic social involvement can also energize young Australians to look beyond token reconciliation gestures toward effective integration with indigenous youths. The social justice claims of Australia and other developed nations should encourage Asians to lobby socially less-involved peers in those countries to advocate fair trade and justice-based compensatory aid for Asian nations. Their shared new world could be all the better by helping Asia reinvent agriculture while preserving the eco footprint.
Equally noteworthy will be the living faith the young of Asia’s 3 percent Catholic diaspora witness among Western peers who are captive to rationalism and individualism.
In recent months, UCA News reported several vignettes of Asian faith life, particularly among the young. The commitment evinced at a tribal youth convention in India and young Singaporeans’ growing attraction to meditation are examples, as are South Korea’s Jesuari movement and the Asian discipleship program in the Philippines. Such outpourings of the Spirit’s living ferment in the continent of the young can be a grace to Asia-Pacific youths.
The momentum of grace peaking at WYD should mission young people to greater social commitment. It can lead to an international Catholic youth caucus for prayerful networking and follow-up on people’s issues. If left to the faith ingenuity of the young, such a caucus may find ways of co-opting international youth networks like IYCS, IMCS, ICMICA and IYCW as well as ecumenical groups.
An inclusivist network may also be receptive to unchurched youths’ missionary-like zeal for authentic living, their new name for spirituality.
Let the coming Pentecost show us that if some of our young people speak in different tongues as they search for life’s meaning, even through a relative ethic, they all witness the same Jesus.