| Benedict XVI ended up in Cologne by the will of his predecessor The tradition of holding World Youth Days was introduced in 1984 by Pope John Paul II. Then 300 thousand pilgrims gathered on Palm Sunday (Catholics call it Palm Sunday) in St. Peter's Square in Rome, and the Pope personally led a prayer service in the Colosseum at a simple wooden cross. The next year, 1985, the UN declared the Year of Youth, and from that moment on, World Catholic Youth Day began to be held regularly. The religious festival is held every year, but not always in the same way. Sometimes it was celebrated in dioceses simply as a local event, and sometimes the Vatican organized a grand international pilgrimage to meet the Pope. Since its first meeting in St. Peter's Square, the wooden cross has become a symbol of World Youth Days and travels with the pontiff from country to country.
John Paul II managed to hold similar youth meetings with mass prayer services on almost all continents. In mid-August 1991, the VI World Youth Day, memorable for tens of thousands of Russians, took place in Czestochowa, Poland. Mikhail Gorbachev then opened the borders of the USSR for the first time, at the request of John Paul II, allowing Soviet citizens to cross the Polish border using ordinary internal passports and letters issued by Catholic parishes. Poland also accepted Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians and citizens of other states of the former socialist bloc. And John Paul II preached at a meeting with young people that the roots of European unity are in both the West and the East: “The Church in Europe can finally breathe freely with two lungs.”
The 20th World Catholic Youth Day in Cologne was also planned during the lifetime of John Paul II. The most popular Roman pontiff even became the first pilgrim to register for the event. The registration took place via the Internet and became a symbolic gesture during the pontiff's audience with a group of young European Catholics who visited Castelgandolfo in September 2004. Karol Wojtyła still managed to compose a message for the 20th Day in Cologne, in which he wrote that “The Roman Catholic Church places great hopes on young people, expects from them enthusiasm and new energy for its mission and at the same time listens to questions regarding the meaning of life that are so interesting young people."
However, another Pope had to go to Germany - a German, a former cardinal, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was famous for his conservatism and had not previously approved of the very idea of holding populist youth days. It is noteworthy that Benedict XVI was so worried before his trip to Germany that during his weekly address to the believers from the window of his summer residence, Castelgandolfo forgot to first greet the flock and wish everyone health, and then bless those who came. “Today I forget the most important thing,” the pontiff apologized, “apparently, my soul is already in Cologne.” Kirill VASILENKO |
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