20TH WORLD YOUTH DAY, COLOGNE, GERMANY.

Cardinal Pells, the Australian Ambasador for Germany and the NSW Minister for Tourism, amongs the Australian pilgrims in Cologne. Sydney is a clear favourite to host the 2008 World Youth Day, to be announced by the Pope on Sunday. The WYD will be amazing for Sydney. It will bring hundreds of thousands of youth from all over the world! It has only started over here and it is just fantastic, it is going to be an amazing experience for everyone over here. There are about 2300 Australians that came over here. The celebration is to culminate with aproximately a million people celebrating mass with Pope Benedict the 16th on Sunday and a vigil mass the night before.

The Australian contingent.


Meeting the crowd.





The 14km pilgrimage-The Sydney group decided to walk 14km to the site of the Saturday vigil and Sunday Mass with the Pope rather than catching the train and just walking the last 4 to 5 kms!


Saturday night vigil.


Just imagine 1 million people camping under the moonlight! Although in the previous couple of days we thought we were all going to be camping out in the rain. Thanks to some devine intervention the skies held up and we all slept relatively dry under the moonlight. We were not allowed to use camping tents so are sleeping bags still got a little bit damped from the settling fog. Like most people we had a plastic sheet (tarps) to sleep on and to put over our sleeping bags, some people were really roughing it and only had bits of cardboard and newspaper to rest their sleeping bags on. It was an experience nevertheless and we enjoyed the experience. However the following day I caught a cold from which I am still suffering from.


Early in the following morning.


Sunday morning mass. Afterwards the Pope announces that Sydney is to host the 2008 World Youth Day!