A GIANT altar for 500 cardinals and bishops was raised this week for what is being heralded as the biggest event in Sydney since the 2000 Olympics. When Pope Benedict XVI pays his first visit to Australia for World Youth Day, to be held from July 15-20, it will be an opportunity for the Catholic Church in Australia to showcase its faith and might, and also show that it can still draw a crowd - anticipated to reach close to 500,000.But the church's influence in Australian society is waning.
The 2006 Census shows more than 5 million Australians claim to be Catholic, but a national count of mass attendance found the percentage of the Catholic population attending mass on a typical weekend had slid from 15.3 per cent in 2001 to 13.8 per cent in 2006.
World Youth Day organisers are hoping the international event - hosted every two or three years in a different city - will prove to be a major fillip to the faith of the most under-represented group among its Australian ranks - the young.
World Youth Day 2008 co-ordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher said attracting young people to experience God was one of the main aims behind the festival.
"How we reach out to younger Catholics is one of the challenges of any generation," he said. "We can't take it for granted."
Sydney will host the smallest World Youth Day since Pope John Paul II held the first event in Rome in 1986.
Almost 250,000 registered pilgrims are expected to descend on the city, compared with the largest event in the Philippines in 1995, where 4 million attended the final papal mass.
The smaller anticipated attendance in Sydney has been attributed to the distance and expense of travelling to Australia.
The cost to host the extravaganza is expected to top $150 million - a figure that has come under fire from within and outside the church.
Part of this will be recouped with a pilgrim registration fee that Australian and international visitors, including 3000 from southeast Queensland, will pay to take part in the event.
But taxpayers will also be paying, with the New South Wales Government contributing $86 million to cover the papal visit's impact on Sydney's public transport, roads, policing and emergency medical services.
An additional $42 million to compensate NSW's racing industry will be funded jointly from state and federal coffers for the use of Randwick Racecourse as a papal mass venue on July 20.
Father Michael Whelan, a Sydney-based Marist priest and director of the Aquinas Academy for Adult Education, has mixed feelings about whether World Youth Day will have the big impact anticipated by its organisers, and is critical of its financial cost.
"I hope it will have a deep and positive impact on young people and their faith, but there will be others who will not be touched and to whom it will only confirm their negativity towards the church," he said.
Father Whelan says there has been considerable negativity to World Youth Day from the media and Australians in general.
"There was a time when Australians kept their anti-religious feelings under wraps (so as) not to be disrespectful," he said.
"But the tide has turned and people have become quite upfront about their negativity."
Father Whelan believes part of the reason for the negativity is fatigue with major events, such as last year's APEC, disrupting people's lives.
Sydney's central business district will be particularly affected, especially during the Pope's arrival.
The NSW Government's World Youth Day spokeswoman Kristina Keneally says all of the CBD will be affected by road closures and special-event clearways.
"As it is a normal business day for 180,000 CBD workers we need to make sure they are aware of what is happening so they can plan ahead," Ms Keneally said.
"Sydney is on the cusp of this year's biggest international event outside the Beijing Olympics."
Another area of criticism is the way World Youth Day has been organised from the top of the church hierarchy instead of from the grassroots.
Father Whelan says this has left many people feeling disempowered.
He also says a sexual abuse crisis has affected Australians' attitudes towards the church.
And he believes Pope Benedict should apologise to abuse victims during his Australian visit, the way he did on his trip to the United States earlier this year.
"If nothing else - apart from celebrating mass - he should meet with sexual abuse victims while he is here," Father Whelan said.
The Broken Rites Australia victim support group is seeking a private papal audience for a small group of victims.
The group's president, Chris MacIsaac, said: "A papal apology should be witnessed by a small group of church-abuse victims, especially as the focus of his visit is on youth.
"The Pope must also promise that his bishops will do more to help church-abuse victims. Many victims are still aggrieved that they have received a poor response, or no response, from the church about their sexual abuse."
Bishop Fisher will not confirm or deny whether the Pope plans to apologise to sexual-abuse victims.
He says it is entirely up to the Pontiff to decide if he will say sorry.
World Youth Day will also bring renewed focus on Blessed Mary MacKillop, Australia's first candidate for sainthood.
Ninety-nine years after her death, the Australian nun - who co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph in the 1860s - is still waiting in the wings to receive the Church's final seal of saintly approval, known as canonisation.
Authorities in Rome need to be convinced that two miracles have occurred as a result of prayers to MacKillop.
So far only one has been accepted: the cure of a woman who was dying of leukemia in the 1960s.
During the last papal visit to Sydney in 1995, John Paul II announced MacKillop's beatification - the step before sainthood which bestows on her the title of Blessed.
Supporters of Mary MacKillop have been hoping Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Sydney for World Youth Day will coincide with her canonisation.
The Pope is set to drop in on her burial place and shrine in North Sydney during his visit. But World Youth Day spokeswoman on Mary MacKillop, Josephite Sister Monica Cavanagh, says an announcement of canonisation is unlikely.
A second miracle for MacKillop's cause, involving a woman who has been cured of cancer, has been taken to Rome this month for further investigation, but this stage of the process could take another two years, she said.
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