Welcome - 14th February 2010 - 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

WORLD YOUTH DAY 2008 - SYDNEY

World Youth Day Presentation 1

World Youth Day Presentation 2

Party Saturday 25th October 7pm at Parish Hall

World Youth Day - International Tune - Receive the Power

The world day is organised by the Catholic Church every three years. The WYD brings together young people from around the globe to celebrate and learn about their faith.

World Youth Day Cross arrives in Australia The symbols of the world's largest youth event - the World Youth Day Cross and Icon of Our Lady - touched down in Australia on July 2nd, 2007 ahead of a day of welcome celebrations in Sydney.

The 3.8 metre high Cross and accompanying Icon

 a portrait of Mary, the Mother of Christ and the Child Jesus - were officially welcomed from New Zealand by Prime Minister John Howard, NSW Premier Morris Iemma, and hundreds of Australian youth, clergy and laity. The Cross and Icon will then travel to the shrine of Blessed Mary MacKillop in North Sydney where a 12-month pilgrimage to more than 400 Australian communities will formally start.

'The World Youth Day Cross has travelled on the shoulders of young people all over the world for more than 20 years, bringing the message of hope, peace and Christ's love for humanity,' said Archbishop Philip Wilson, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

'These inspiring symbols will travel throughout this country, touching the lives of many young Australians on their way,' he said.

WYD08 will the largest event Australia has ever hosted even bigger than the 2000 Olympic games. WYD 08 will also mark the first vist of his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia and through the WYD08 experience, young people from throughout the world will make a pilgrmaage in faith, meet and experience the love of God.

The Blessed Sacrament are involved with the WYD08 with two of our young parishioners attending the event, Bernadette Hickie and Luke Fenton will be taking the Blessed Sacrament Parish direct to the heart of WYD08. The will be travelling with Bishop Malcolm McMahon along with about 80 other youngsters from both Nottingham and Hallam Diocese. They will join the remaining 20 Diocese of England & Wales making the pilgramage making a total of about 1,500 people going to Sydney representing England & Wales.

They fly out to Melbourne, Australia on Tuesday 8th July, and ariv ein Melbourne in the early hours of Thursday 10th July. When they arrive in Melbourne they will be hosted by local parishioners of St Ambrose's and St Joseph's situated in Brunswick for 5 days. They will carry out duties for the local diocese called

 "Days in the Diocese" 

Their itinary is:

They then move to Sydney

They then return on Monday 21st arriving back Tuesday 22nd.

In addition to the above Bernadette and Luke are also joining 30 of the other pilgrims representing all the other Diocese to act as World Youth Day media co-ordinators. They have travelled to London to receive training and will be providing a series of reports of the the event that will be published on local and national press and TV articles.

 When Bernadette and Luke return they plan to hold a small celebration to share their experiences with the parish. Detials of this and any photos will be detailed on this page.

Slide Show of Photos from Down Under

World Youth Day Photographs

 DAILY DIARY

10TH JULY 2008:

G'day from Down Under! We have arrived safely after taking three planes to get here. We left Leicester around 7am on Tuesday morning, and met the rest of our group at Manchester Airport; and me and Luke both achieved something that the rest of the group didn't; we had 'Heavy' tags put on our bags! Mine was 25kg, which was nothing compared to Luke's massive 29.9kg - the undisputed winner of excessive bag packing - but we do have our laptops, cameras and equipment with us, so it's justified.

Our first flight went from Manchester to Dubai and took seven hours, and for lunch we were given;
Appetiser: Marinated prawns with a herb dressing.
Main Course: Creamy Chicken Curry with cashew basmati rice.
Dessert: Morello Cherry.
When we landed in Dubai it was dark and 32c, and we were given an hour and a half before boarding our next flight, and eventhough Luke lined up for his McArabia burger from McDonalds, he will just have to wait to enjoy that delicasy on the way home.

Our second flight when to Singapore and took seven hours, and we were given a sandwich and cookies as a snack, but the real treat came when it was time for breakfast, as they served;

Orange Juice
Fruit Salad
Croissant
Muffin
Crackers & Cheese
and... Chinese Stir-Fried Noodles - the most unusual combination of the journey!
And our final section of the trip was to travel to Melbourne, where once again we enjured a seven hour flight, but we even get through the 600 channels avaliable. Overall, it was a good flight, and Emirates made sure we were well looked after. Luke said that, "despite the length, everyone remained cheery throughout - looking forward to the upcoming events". We are now just waiting at a secondary school in Melbourne to meet our host families. So until tomorrow... G'day, Bernie.

THURSDAY:

After a quick breakfast of cereal and fruit at the secondary school, we packed onto another coach and headed towards the city. The bus driver, Tony, gave an en-route tour of Melbourne, pointing out sights such as the Telstra Stadium. We arrived at the train station to be met by our host families, and then move on towards our host parish of St. Ambrose’s in Brunswick. We were greeted by the rest of the host families, and they had provided soup and bread for us all – the pumpkin soup was very nice, and then we went to our host homes to freshen up and get to know our host families a bit better. I am staying with two other pilgrims, Rosie and Jess, with a lovely couple, Maureen and Emmanuel, whose children are now all grown up. They invited us in, and immediately we felt welcome, and soon learnt a lot about Melbourne, and their family. A few hours later, we all met again at St. Ambrose’s and headed into the inner-city to meet up with Bishop Malcolm and visit a few key places for pilgrims. As soon as we stepped off the trams, we became an attraction with our bottle green t-shirts and Robin Hood hats – we are now the stars of Melbourne, everyone wants our picture. The Italians have blue ponchos, the French have their berets, but everyone wants a photo with us – EVERYONE! After being stopped several time we eventually made it to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Days in the Diocese Welcome Centre, where we wrote on the pilgrim’s wall on the little space that was left. After walking around for a couple of hours, we caught the tram back to St. Ambrose’s where we were picked up from our host families and taken to St. Joseph’s parish in West Brunswick, where the Hallam Diocese were staying. There was lots of food and drink to finish off an exhausting day, which led to some people sleeping for 15 hours! But there are things to do and places to see on Friday…

FRIDAY:

After the first nights stay with host families, everyone was refreshed after having more than enough sleep, or at least enough to be able to function! The best moment of the day was when Rosie was reunited with her suitcase, which had been lost by Emirates – she didn’t, and couldn’t, stop smiling all day. After some lunch, we headed into the inner-city again and had a look around Federation Square, and were given some free time to wonder in groups. The boys went shopping, while the girls all walked along the river and went to the Immigration Museum, ending up meeting at St. Augustine’s church to walk to the Telstra Stadium together for the Commissioning Mass celebrated by the Bishops and Archbishops with around 50,000 pilgrims from around the world, it was an unbelievable experience, but just practice on numbers expected in Sydney! After Mass together, we had dinner with St. Ambrose’s parish priest, Father Michael Casey. It was really tasty, and there was a great atmosphere as we got to meet the youth of their parish and enjoy each others company for a few hours. After another busy day, everyone fell into bed – knowing that there was an earlier start on Saturday morning.

Monday:

After a 12-hour coach journey across the Australian outback every person was glad to get off the coach, which had, at stages become something like an Indian railway. We arrived in Sydney at 6.00p.m local time at immediately cleaned and showered to recover from the journey. Very quickly it became clear to us that we were staying in quite an expensive area as Nicole Kidman owns an apartment just down the road and Kylie is a regular at the café just next door, and feeling that it is necessary, many of the pilgrims are making it their effort to scout out the local water holes to replenish their needs. Tomorrow is the opening mass for WYD and I am so excited by the idea that I will now not be in the company of 20,000 people but hundred’s of thousands.

Tuesday

Sydney 2008 became the official 23rd world youth day today as a mass held by Cardinal Pell and attended by over 100,000 people welcomed people from across the world and began the build up to the vigil mass to be held at Randwick racecourse on Sunday.
For Bernadette and myself however, the day started a lot earlier than 10 o’clock, as we had to pick up our media passes. So at 7 o’clock we rose and by half 7 we had left the hotel and were on our way to the collection point. From the very outset we should have known that things would conspire against us, as there was a hill similar in size to the foothills of the Himalayas followed by a series of wrong turns. We arrived at the collection point and discovered that all the volunteers, media and priests had been bunched together and the queues were horrendous. After 30 minutes queuing we were told that the collection point had moved to the other side of Sydney at Darling Harbour, and not willing to come back again tomorrow we began walking. This, although tiring because it was still early was a great experience because we got to see parts of Sydney that we might never have seen.
We arrived at the International Convention Centre and were dealt with within 5 minutes, and immediately discovered the amount of work that needed doing over the next week.
After, we rushed across Sydney by foot, from Cockle Bay to Circular quay in order to meet up with the group and head off for lunch. It was here that we first encountered the enormous queues that formed when 100,000 people descend on one place at one time.
The opening mass was without a doubt one of the best experiences of my life, with thousands of different people there all practicing the faith as one.
One of the highlights of my day however, was when I asked a Kenyan what he was looking forward to taking back home and he said, “I am looking forward to taking all the blessings that we receive here and sharing them at home.”

Pope Benedict XVI Arrival in Sydney for World Youth Day

Pilgrims Walk to Vigil and sleepover