A record number of Vietnamese pilgrims will attend World Youth Day this year but US numbers are down - and 50 Angola pilgrims are stranded in Sydney instead of Adelaide because tour organisers thought the SA capital was only an hour way. The Sydney Morning Herald reports an Angolan Catholic bishop and 50 pilgrims are stranded in Sydney after assuming their final destination, Adelaide, was just an hour away.
Angolan Bishop Almeida Kanda, five priests and the pilgrims were meant to arrive in Adelaide for Days in the Diocese regional events held across the nation in the lead-up to World Youth Day in Sydney.
They each paid $3,800 to fly to Sydney, believing their onward journey to Adelaide would be a formality.
"The group was told Adelaide was a long way from Sydney, but I think Australia's long distances are sometimes hard to comprehend," Auxiliary Bishop of Adelaide, Greg O'Kelly, said.
"They thought it might just be an hour or two away."
Bishop O'Kelly said the group was shocked to discover Adelaide was 1,500km and a 20 hour bus ride from Sydney.
Organisers of Adelaide's World Youth Day and the Croydon Park host parish were now trying to raise the $20,000 needed to fund the last leg of the Angolans' journey.
"We have just got to get that money from somewhere," Bishop O'Kelly said.
Record for Vietnam at WYDBishop Joseph Vu Van Thien of Hai Phong, chairman of the Episcopal Commission for Youth of the Vietnam Bishops' Conference, told UCA News on June 29 that 70 bishops and priests, 50 Religious and 244 laypeople from the country's 26 dioceses have already registered with the commission.
"The 364 official delegates is a record for Vietnamese delegations, because only tens of delegates attended previous WYD celebrations," he noted.
Bishop Thien said many other people who have not registered with the commission will also fly to Sydney for the WYD celebration. They will enter Australia as tourists or people who visit their relatives, he said. He estimated a total of 600 Vietnamese will attend the event.
Many people will attend WYD since prices of plane tickets are low, people today are economically better off than before, and it is easier for local people to get passports and visas, the bishop observed.
Vietnamese Australians will sponsor free tents around the city, food and local travel expenses to and from WYD events, he added.
Pierre Nguyen Cong Lich, a lay Catholic from Vinh, told UCA News three priests and seven lay Catholics aged 20-55 from that northern diocese would fly to Melbourne on July 2.
Lich, 47, who has provided free accommodation and computer training for disabled people at his home for years, said, "Most of us will go abroad and attend an international gathering for the first time, so we will try to learn something useful from the celebration and faith practices of young people from other countries."
The man, two of whose three children are paralyzed and bedridden, said he will record the WYD events to share with local youths.
US down
However, the Herald reports the United States says it will be sending 15,000 pilgrims to World Youth Day, the smallest contingent sent by the American church to a World Youth Day celebration in a decade.
The number is down from 21,000 expected in March.
Exorbitant travel costs, an economic downturn, a buoyant Australian dollar and the recent visit by the Pope to the US are all believed to have played a part in the lower than expected numbers.
The US Church issued a statement yesterday saying its contingent would include 1,140 groups from dioceses and parishes, as well as religious associations and schools. More than 500 individuals, including families, would come on their own. Together, the Americans would comprise the largest national delegation to Sydney.
The pilgrims will be joined by 50 bishops, including Cardinal Francis George, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
National celebrations at WYD
Many national celebrations are also expected to take place during WYD with up to 30 gatherings across Sydney, WYD organisers say0.
An expected 3,000 French will celebrate Bastille Day on 14 July in the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, while 10,000 friends of the Franciscans will meet on Bondi Beach and 8,000 Asian youth will meet in Sydney Olympic Park.
"An international World Youth Day is a chance for pilgrims to hold large celebrations with those who belong to the same religious order or language group who would otherwise not have the chance to meet and share their faith," said Fr Mark Podesta, WYD08 spokesperson.
"Take the Neo-Catechumenal Way for example. Or the French might want to celebrate in their own language, inviting French speakers to their gathering from France, Africa and the Pacific, as well as Francophone Australians. The Italians will do the same.
"Around 142,000 pilgrims will attend one or more of these national and community gatherings.”
And an Australian Muslim school said Wednesday it will house hundreds of young Catholic pilgrims when Pope Benedict XVI travels to Sydney this month on a visit organizers hope encourages interfaith dialogue, AFP reports.Malek Fahd Islamic School, in the southwestern suburb of Greenacre, said it would also be hosting about 350 pilgrims from July 14 until the Pope concludes his visit with a mass expected to attract up to 500,000 people on July 20.
"We've been regularly involved in interfaith dialogue with other schools and we thought it was our duty really," the school's welfare and discipline coordinator Enas Darwich told AFP.
"We didn't think twice about it."
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