AMONG the many uncertainties about World Youth Day is who will pick up the bill if the pilgrims don't come.A week out from what's promoted as the year's second biggest event after the Olympics, the answer to the big money question is no clearer now than it was when Sydney won the event in 2005.
While there's no doubt that thousands will come, financial success is based on organisers reaching the target of 225,000 paying customers called pilgrims.
Organisers are still insisting they are on target to reach or exceed that number but refuse to say how many have paid up so far or provide a breakdown of which countries they are coming from.
History shows that predicting attendance to this event is fraught with difficulties.
When Canada's Catholic Church was organising the 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, they originally expected 750,000 pilgrims but ended up getting only 187,000, of whom just 49,000 were Canadians, way short of the 200,000 predicted.
That collapse in numbers was partly caused by the attack on the World Trade Centre the year before.
When the church eventually published audited figures on the event, they revealed a potential surplus of $C10 million had been transformed into an actual deficit of $C38 million.
Organisers insist the event was still a huge success, with 800,000 Catholics attending a Mass held by Pope John Paul II.
The problem was that many of those in the audience chose not to pay the $C220 registration fee, or even the $C40 weekend fee, and the Canadian Catholic Church had to call for donations after the event and then do a whip-round of its dioceses to fund the shortfall.
No one will say if this scenario will be repeated if pilgrim targets are not met in Sydney. The NSW Government and the Catholic Church say they have reached agreement on a document dated June 2007 which sets out who is responsible for meeting what costs.
But they refuse to release it or reveal its contents, so it is not possible to know how any shortfall might be met.
Jim Hanna, a spokesman for the church's World Youth Day organising committee, insists NSW taxpayers will not be asked to top up the $108.5 million they are already contributing. "It's not taxpayers who meet any shortfall," he said.
But he could not say for certain that the church would cover any deficit, as happened in Canada.
With a further $55 million in Federal Government funding for the event, Father Tom Rosica, who was Canada's national director of World Youth Day, said Australian organisers have enjoyed far more government backing than did his team, which received about $C18 million in cash and support.
This large taxpayer contribution and heavy government involvement has echoes of the model the NSW Government used for the Olympic Games, where taxpayers bore the financial risk.
Father Rosica said among differences between Toronto and Sydney were that Australia is 27 per cent Catholic (in Canada it is 43 per cent), making it the first "non-catholic area" to host the event.
Canada's national broadcaster, CBC, covered the event and provided a feed to other networks at no cost, he said. S
ydney organisers have imposed strict limits, similar to those at the Olympics, to prevent networks other than the host broadcaster SBS from covering the various events.
In Toronto, no official newspaper was appointed for the event. In Sydney that honour has gone to The Daily Telegraph, owned by News Corporation, whose chairman, Rupert Murdoch, was awarded a papal knighthood a decade ago to the surprise of many in the church, given his long history of support for page three girls.
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