Coming up on this episode, we're going to be learning about the upcoming trip to the World Youth Day celebration in Lisbon, Portugal when we speak with Andrew Pometto and Delio Romero from the Office of Young Adult and Campus Ministry. Welcome to Around the Archdiocese. Sharing information, insights and stories about our Catholic faith from across the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston. You're listening to Around the Archdiocese.
Here's your host, Sean O'Drystal. Welcome to Around the Archdiocese. My name is Sean O'Drystal. We are excited to have you joining us for today's episode where we are talking about the upcoming World Youth Day celebration taking place in Lisbon, Portugal next month, August 1 through the 6th.
And to discuss that with us, we have two members from the staff of the Archdiocese and Office of Young Adult and Campus Ministry. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves? My name is Angie Pometto. I'm the Director of the Office for Young Adult and Campus Ministry.
And I'm the Edomittle, the Associate Director for the Office of Young Adult and Campus Ministry. And welcome to both of you. Nice to have you both here in the studio with me. I want to go back a little bit.
You two will be, well, your office actually has been planning this journey until it's been for World Youth Day for over a year now. But tell me a little bit about World Youth Day in general. What is it? How did these World Youth Day celebrations get started?
Well, World Youth Day actually was begun by St. John Paul II in 1985. And it's met together Catholic young people from all around the world for several days of prayer, ketikisas, and community. And I think for all those who are working for the church, probably many of us have gone to a World Youth Day at one point.
I know a lot of people, Denver, I remember that when I was a kid. I really wanted to go. I was a little too young. I think I was right at the age.
My parents were nervous about it. I didn't get to go. Denver was one of the first ones. I know Toronto was a big one for us here in the States.
That was easy to go to. Sydney was a fun one. I mean, there's just been so many different places that the World Youth Day event has gone. So many people have stories of where the world youth has been played apart in their faith journey.
Have you ever been to one of the World Youth Day celebrations? Actually, I have not. This is going to be my first experience at World Youth Day. Oh, wow.
I can remember I was getting my brother prepared for the Toronto one. And he actually was hosted by the chef who was cooking for St. Don Paul II. Oh, wow.
Yeah. But I actually never had the chance to go. So I'm excited to be able to be taking all these programs out with our office. It's going to be exciting.
So how many you say pilgrims? How many are going with the archdiocese? We have 106 pilgrims confirmed that are going with us. And what's the age range for that?
Because when you say youth, I know here in the United States, we're thinking 18 and a half years later, but we're talking more of an international definition of youth. Yes. So as an office of the Olympic Campus Ministry, our age range is 18 through 39 years old. Yes.
And there are actually five other parish or other entities from the archdiocese that are going to World Youth Day. And some of those do have teenagers that are going to be taking on the trip. So but our trip in particular will just be the young adults. And there's one other group, the Red and Christie young adults will just be young adults.
But other than that, the other groups have a mix of families, teenagers, young adults, young people. So give me a little bit of details about the trip. When you guys leave, how long does it last? What kind of stuff happens?
So for here in our archdiocese and trip, we offer two options. So the first option we call the extended trip. So the extended trip, we leave on the 26th of July and we come back on after World Youth Day on August 7th. For the extended trip, we are starting in Spain.
So we're going to Madrid and then we're going to have a day trip to Adela and Toledo. I have one free day of exploring in Madrid before we then head to Lisbon to meet up with the basic trip pilgrims. Once we get to Lisbon, the first thing we do there is we actually take a day trip to Fatima. So if you're looking at Portugal and Catholic things and Portugal, I think Fatima is the first thing that people are going to think of.
So we're going to get to go to see the site where that apparition happened. And then we'll return to Lisbon for the World Youth Day festivities. And when does the World Youth Day say? So there's an extended trip that you guys are taking, the extended pilgrimage.
One of the actual dates for the World Youth Day celebration. Yes. So the basic trip is just the World Youth Day and I think those pilgrims flying on the 31st to the actual, or 30th I think, but the actual World Youth Day is August 1st through 6th, or 7th, 6th, 6th. You do know when you're coming back, right?
Yes. So tell me a little more about what actually happens there. To have all these pilgrims present, is it just five days of mass and parties or what exactly is taking place during this time? But you're looking at the Lea.
Do you know what I mean? Yes. Sorry. So how do I do something?
Yes. So the morning kind of kesus every day, that's a whole like, it's like 9th to like noon or something like that, usually where you have mass, you'll have a talk of some sort, and they bring in like all the different great Catholic speakers from all around the country all around the globe. So I mean, every, you know, all those things about the famous Catholics, you know, all the fangirls, the people that we go crazy for. Matt Marr, Matt Frad.
I mean, they're probably going to be there. So we're going to, you know, find them and hopefully encounter all those folks. So they'll be the ones kind of giving the talks and things, so we'll also have some prayer. I think this year with Pope Francis, he's encouraging a listening session of some sort.
So that synodality is going to play a piece in the Kadekis sessions, which I think is going to be interesting to see that's going to be a new piece that I haven't encountered before. So that's the mornings, the afternoons are free. Or at least there's nothing scheduled and the ideas that those pilgrims are going to go explore. Lisbon, they're going to see different sites in the city, encounter different people, meet other young adults from around the world.
There's also a confession available. So there's something called the City of Joy, which you got to see some of that, right? The preparations for that, because Felia actually got to go to Lisbon in February to do the prep trip. So what was that?
What do you know about the City of Joy? Yeah, so we actually visited the headquarters of World Youth Day and we met there and went through all the little rooms they had. And one of them was the confessionals that they were working on. And it was a prototype that they were going to be using for World Youth Day.
So it was really cool to be able to meet with Sebastian. I remember his name and seeing all the preparation they've been doing. And they have a beautiful room chapel where they have different relics of all the saints that are like the saints of World Youth Day. So it's just beautiful to see that walking up the staircase and they have all the pictures of these saints as well.
But in this chapel, they have the relics of the saints too. So it's just beautiful to be able to experience that before World Youth Day. And aside from that, well, I had the experience of going with Versa, who's a pilgrimage company that we're going with, and went through visiting the hotels that we might stay at. And I got to go to Fatima.
This is the first time I actually was going to Europe too. So it was by myself, I went to Fatima and with Versa, and I was able to experience the beautiful shrine that's there in Portugal. And I am so excited to be able to see all these young adults that are coming with us to experience Fatima. And also if they have a chance to visit Santa Ram too, which there is a Eucharistic miracle there.
And best of Carlógoutí has been there as well. And so I just think it's going to be wonderful. I'm excited. I'm back to the city of Joy.
So again, they were building these confessional structures. It's like a wooden structure. And how many do you think, did they give you a number of them? They did not say, but I know the one I still have like D13.
So it's like alphabetized in numbers. Like who knows how many? I mean, literally probably hundreds of confessionales because of all the priests that will be here in confession at the city of Joy. And they will have a chapel space and relics.
So it's just going to be, so that's the afternoon. And then in the evenings on certain nights there's different things. So they'll have a welcoming ceremony in Mass at the very beginning. And then of course when Pope Francis comes, we'll welcome him.
And usually there's a route that is, you know, he'll drive through the city to greet the pilgrims. There's a way of the cross. That's a key, like all the world you're facing, how to weigh the cross and it's tended to be like that country kind of bringing their culture to play in some way and how we pray those stations sets on Friday night. And then it ends with a vigil.
And I've been, yes, we hear a lot about the vigil. You can't almost can't describe it. We just have to live it. So what happens is we all walk about five to 20 miles outside the city.
And we take our sleeping bags and we just camp out. So we get our sleeping bag on the ground and that's where we camp out for a whole night. So we get settled there and then that evening there's a user scatoration that leads into just sleeping overnight under the stars with a million pilgrims and then this final morning on Sunday we have Mass with Pope Francis. So how many people are they expecting at this event?
What's the latest estimates? You know, I haven't heard the whole number. I did hear that there were more than 20,000 just from America. And I'm guessing it'll be because I mean, usually it's at least a million.
And I've heard this one might be one of the bigger ones in recent histories. It might even be pushing that million, I think. So yeah, I haven't heard those numbers recently. What is the hope for the young adults who are attending?
What do you hope that they get out of the experience like this? I hope that they're able to encounter Christ and all the others that are going to be there to be able to see Jesus in every other program that will be there from around the world and be able to experience what the universality of our church too. It's just beautiful. Yeah.
Well, because I got to go to World Youth Day in Madrid and two of my key moments were just kind of in that realization, right, to realize just the beauty of our Catholic faith and that it is universal that extends beyond our little world here in here. And for me, like the vigil night when I was in Madrid, we had this whole field full, like I said, a million-some pilgrims. So it's just crazy and people are talking and playing frisbee or kicking the soccer around or whatever. There was a big storm that night.
Anyway, there was just a lot of chaos. But then as soon as, because they did adoration, as soon as they began Eucharistic Adoration, that entire entire field was just silent to realize that each and every person there, even if you were, you know, a mile away from the Eucharist, you knew that that was Jesus there, that that was what was happening and that everyone just shut up and we prayed. And to me, that was a really beautiful moment. And so to have moments like that, to be able to realize, I guess, yeah, it's living out this reality of the Eucharist in this year of the Eucharist Revival, right, to highlight that, to recognize just the universality that it's the same faith that we teach and we live as an American, as someone from Portugal, as someone from Africa, as someone from Australia, wherever you're from, that there's this unity that brings us together.
I think those are the things that I hope people can kind of come away with. Just, again, this appreciation of Christ and Eucharist and encounter with Him and then this appreciation also just for the beauty of our Catholic Church. You keep referring to the participants as pilgrims. What is a pilgrim?
How is that different than just a participant or a traveler, or even a tourist? Why does World Youth Day refer to the young adults coming as pilgrims? Well, I mean, we're not going to World Youth Day on a vacation. And I think that's a difference from being a tourist of going on vacation and checking out what's, but a pilgrim is someone that's been going through this journey and getting prepared, not even like when you arrived to World Youth Day, but days before, like you're saying, like, we started preparing a whole year before.
So it's someone that's been going on this journey, preparing themselves physically, but also spiritually and mentally to be able to be able to be present with Christ at this wonderful event, that's World Youth Day. And I think with that, the level of, if you're on vacation and something goes wrong, you can get upset or you can get frustrated and you can be like, oh, well, let me call my waiter and get that fixed, whatever. You know, as a pilgrim, you kind of have a different attitude. You have an attitude of, well, thank you.
Even this is not, you know, and I think sometimes a food situation can be, it's just you kind of get what you're given sometimes at World Youth Day and as a pilgrim, you just say thank you and you, you know, you take what you're given and I guess the phrase offered up will probably be said a couple times. That's what it means to be a pilgrim, like to be able to go with the challenging pieces. Because there will be some challenges. I mean, when you get a million people in one city, there's a lot of challenges around like the lines for the bathroom or even lines to get food or where to get the food or things like that.
We're just transportation, right? That's going to be a big deal. I'm not sure if Lisbon is ready for a million people. It's a smaller city in a lot of ways.
But so there will be some challenges that are going to be encountered. But to encounter those challenges with an attitude of Christ, really, of saying, well, it's not about me. Let me offer this up. Let me carry my cross.
Let me help the other person more than I need to help myself in this, whatever situation is happening. So normally for a trip like this, it's not just the pilgrims. You usually have some sort of either group leader, so I assume it would be the two of you. But oftentimes a group will take a priest or spiritual advisor or something.
Who else, a company? Is there anyone notable? A company in the group this year? Yeah, so first of all, we have our 106 pilgrims and they represent a lot of different people.
We have young adults from more than 30 parishes that speak both English and Spanish. We also have a group of students and faculty from UST, University of St. Thomas. We also have a group of college students, mostly from the Galveston Newman Center.
So some of our leaders include some of those people connected to those different ministries. We also have a couple priests joining us. So our two priests that are assigned to our chaplains are Father Christopher Meyer, who's right now the parochial bicker at St. Faustina.
And Father Miguel Perez, who's a companion of the cross priest who is serving at Queen of Peace. So those are the two that are going with us as chaplains. We also have a third priest, Father Rodrigo Ula Chavari from the Mary Knoll missionaries. He's a vocations promoter for them.
And so he's joined us on the ship as well. So those three will be kind of our spiritual leaders through the journey. But we also do have a couple of campus ministers who are going with us as leaders and some other folks. We have two religious sisters from UST, Sister Maria Frasati and Sister Albert Marie, who both work at UST.
They are from the Dominicans of the Mary, Mary Mother of the Eucharist Order. So really a great, great support system in terms of the leaders. And then what about, I know often the bishops will gather there as well. Are Cardinal or Bishop Italo going to be attending?
Yeah, so Bishop Italo will be attending. He'll is a separate hotel situation, probably over the past few years. I'm sure most of it. I know.
Oh, the leader knows. But no, so he will be there in Lisbon and we hope to be able to gather all the Houston pilgrims at some point to just be able to greet him and talk to have him share with us his encounter with Christ, his witness and his leadership really. So we're hoping to get that set up. Wonderful.
Yeah. And then another one, one other local connection is so when we go, we're going to be bringing a few gifts along with us. For each of the pilgrims, there's a world you stay a magnificat has put together a booklet that has all the prayers and things and the masses. So we bought that for our pilgrims.
They'll get that. We also have a little tradable item. So that's one of the things people do. They trade, you know, here's something from America trade with someone from a different country.
And the last giveaway is these pilgrim rosaries, which is part of the ministry from Father David Michael Moses, Christ, a good shepherd right now. So which is kind of cool. So the pilgrim rosaries, you have a QR code on the rosary itself that people can scan and then you see and then give it to somebody else and you can kind of track to see where it goes. So hopefully, this is a pretty cool way.
Hopefully that map of is, you know, is going to explode with people from all over the world who are going to have these rosaries. Wonderful. All these gifts that we were able to give our pilgrims, including their t-shirts. We also do, we're taking care of all of our priests needs, you know, making sure they have a single room and there are some of their travel stuff, you know, parking at the airport, things like that.
So some of those expenses were not covered with other income items. So we are asking for help with financial gifts as well. So for anyone in the diocese who is excited to see our young people be able to encounter the universal church in this very unique way at World Youth Day, we are hoping that you will support us. So all the details are available online at artsgh.org slash wyd 2023 and we do have the text to give as well.
So you can just text the keyword wyd 2023 to the number four one four four four to make financial gift and support our pilgrims. And we'll make sure we include all those links in the show notes for this episode. Have a great. So you have these hundred plus young adults and young people going out for this amazing, you know, obviously it's going to be an amazing experience, you know, for some of them, this will be a once in a lifetime event, you know, to see to meet the Holy Father to celebrate mass with him to experience the church on this, you know, global scale.
What do you hope they come back with? I mean, how is an event like this thousands of miles away? What impact do you hope that this has on the local church here in Galveston Houston? Just them experiencing that coming back, maybe, well, even going there, they might have a couple of questions that they're asking themselves, like the signing in their lives.
And hopefully this experience will just hopefully answer some of those questions that they have one and also if they don't know what gifts they have, like what the Holy Spirit has in store for them for this to be an experience for them to be able to just try to see what that is what the Lord is calling them born to be able to come back here, their local church and just be in apostasy. And just be in apostol on this one, right? Yeah. Yeah.
No, I really do. I haven't quite planned officially like what that will look like, but I do want to have some sort of after pilgrimage for the gathering of some sort, you know, in the fall, because I think the idea is really it's the misagogy, right? It's like the taking this experience and how do we then reflect and make sure that it doesn't just go just as one experience in the books and you're done. You want to have it have me in your life, you know, you want to take it and do something with whatever has encountered whatever has happened to these programs as they experience this event.
So we will do some sort of event like that. But I do want to say like I really do think that as a natural outcome of all this, we should be seeing more young adults about what they're parished. We should be seeing more young adults involved as leaders of young adult ministry. We should be seeing more young adults coming into their parishes as catechists and Eucharistic ministry helpers, musicians, lecturers, all those different things.
Like, I mean, we need the young people to be part of our church now. It's not that they're not a future young adult, you know, and this is not the future churches of the now church. So hopefully as they come back, we want to see those faces continue to be active in our parishes. And I will say that many of the in the or many of the world you stays through history through the past, they come back with many calls of vocation.
And that means lots of things. That means you're, yeah, if you're called to the priesthood religious life, that's obviously a great one. If you're called to married life, I've seen a lot of couples come out of these meanings and you meet someone from the, you know, get to know them a little bit deeper on a trip like this. You never know what God can do with that.
But also just the vocation of the little vocation of like, how do I serve him today? How do I serve him in my life now? And as she said, the apostles on mission, that will be in the following. We have another program for that.
But just ways to help them be able to see that God has a call for you now. You're not the church of tomorrow, you're the church of today. And to see that lived out in a new way here in Houston, it's going to be very exciting. So while you guys are on this amazing experience, you know, I'm assuming when we think of the age of social media, everything is documented.
There's always photos and comments and posts. Are you guys going to be documenting your trip as you go through this experience? Yes, we will. You can follow us on our Instagram account.
It's at artsh.yacm. And we'll be posting stories and also daily posts throughout the whole world, you'd say on days. So yeah, that sounds wonderful. And I know the archdiocese is going to be sharing a lot of those posts on the larger archa, and we'll make sure obviously that we include the link to the Instagram feed in the show notes as well.
Finally, I guess the last thing is those of us who are here at home. I know there's going to be news coverage of this event, obviously an event on this scale. Whenever the Pope does something like this, the news likes to cover it. So I know we'll be watching following along, but what do you need from us?
You know, whether it's prayers or you mentioned the financial support, I want to encourage people to please reach out in any way you can to support this wonderful pilgrimage. But what else do you need from us right now? What can we do beyond the monetary donations to help? Yes, please keep us in your prayers because I'm with anything like that.
Any awesome, you know, faith-based event. I just think sometimes there is a real spiritual battle at hand here, you know. I don't think the devil wants us to go have a great time in World Youth Day, and there will be many obstacles to get in the way of people having a great experience. So yeah, please do just keep us in your prayers, both for our spiritual safety, but also our physical safety.
I mean, like I said, there's many physical demands and challenges. So make sure we're all safe to make sure that travel. I mean, traveling can be a lot. To make sure all that goes well.
Please just, I think the prayers are going to be the biggest thing in addition to some finances. And we are going to do a commissioning mass with all of our pilgrims here in Houston. So that will be at the Catholic Athalaca. The last one is July 24th.
It's going to be at St. Ann's Church. And so all of our World Youth Day Pilgrims will be invited to wear their World Youth Day t-shirts and come to Catholic Athalaca. The mass will be celebrated by Father Miguel Perez, who's one of our chaplains, and he's going to do a little blessing for all the pilgrims.
And that will be our kind of send-off. So we've got to have a moment to gather everyone for one last time before we then get on planes and go across the pond, as they say, to a lovely new adventure for World Youth Day. As you're looking forward to this upcoming trip, what are you most excited about? What are you most looking forward to personally?
One, in CounterChrist. And two, knowing that I have the responsibility of taking 106 pilgrims with us and having them in CounterChrist as well. But I always remember as a team, you know, wanting to go to AYC, which is an arch-legocesan youth conference. And then it's like, okay, what else can I do?
Like, I want everyone else to live what I just lived. And I went to NCYC. And it was like, oh, my church didn't go, but I went along with another parish. I was an hour away and I went, right?
And so finally, living this opportunity of going to World Youth Day, which is like NCYC or AYC times a thousand, it's just going to be incredible. I'm just looking forward to being there and being able to present that with my local church, but with the whole church, you know, the world. And what about for you, Angie? You've been multiple times before.
So in your role as the Director of the Office and kind of overseeing this whole experience for these pilgrims, what are you personally looking forward to for the trip? Well, I will say as a leader, like, I'm trying to set my expectations low because I don't want to go in saying I have to see this or this or this or this or this, you know, because I know that my responsibility really will be to care for the people that scrape their knee or whatever else, you know, I want to make myself available to respond to the needs of our pilgrims as needed. So that's my, I've already set my bar low there. However, I think my hope, and I think I've only been in Houston for five years.
I've worked in the Ministry in Indianapolis and Virginia. I grew up in Iowa. Like, I really think, one of my excited moments is like, I'm just going to plant myself in a place where there's English pilgrims. Wait, I want to see who God puts in front of me.
And God's going to put all these people from all those different parts of my journey that are going to cross my path by the time it entered a time at Franciscan, you know, and I'm just curious to see who God puts in my path. So I think that's what I'm most excited about. And then also, you know, just being free to make sure to take care of all of our pilgrims. So that's wonderful.
Well, Andy Thalia, thank you so much for being with us today. We want to ask all of our listeners, if you want to get involved, if you want to offer financial assistance to those traveling, you can find all that information online on our website, archghe.org slash wid 2023. And we're going to go ahead and put that link in the show notes for this episode. We also want to ask all of our listeners, whenever you're hearing this episode, I don't know when you're going to hear it over when it's going to get into your ears.
But whenever you do, pause for a moment, take a second and say a prayer for the pilgrims, for those in preparation, both from our archdiocese and from all over the world, all the international travelers will be joining our Holy Father for this amazing world you stay celebration. And of course, as always, if you want to learn more about the ministries and offices of the archdiocese, you can visit us online at our website, archghe.org. That's a RCHGH.org. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time here on Around the Archdiocese.