Palm Sunday
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
5 Apr 2009
Today is the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week, when the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are commemorated.
The official Catholic title is Passion Sunday, although today it is better known as Palm Sunday, remembering the crowds in Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus to the city at the beginning of Passover week by waving palms and laying down their garments.
This feast is celebrated everywhere in the Catholic world and this morning in St. Peter's Square in Rome about 100 young people from Australia attended the Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict and handed over the World Youth Day Cross and Icon of Mary the Mother of God to a large contingent from Madrid in Spain, where the next World Youth Day will be held in 2011.
The cross was taken around Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Pacific Islands by teams of young people for the eighteen month period before the Sydney WYD. The cross travelled about 80,000km and visited every Australian diocese.
Older Catholics were surprised by the reverence and faith of many of the youth who gathered to pray. So now the Cross will be carried around Europe and especially to every part of Spain as an essential part of the spiritual preparation for WYD in Madrid 2011.
For the first time the Sydney archdiocese commissioned a sociological survey of pilgrims. Sixty per cent of the respondents came from Australia and New Zealand, twenty per cent from U.S.A. and Canada and most of the remainder from Asia or Ireland and Britain.
The pilgrims were interviewed before, during and after the July 2008 celebrations, not merely to discover whether they enjoyed the experience, but whether they felt their religious convictions has changed in any way.
While much detailed work remains to be done during the next few months to analyse the thousands of responses, the results are very encouraging.
Seven out of every ten pilgrims considered Sydney WYD as "one of the best experiences of my life" or even "as a life changing event".
They especially enjoyed making new friends, often from other nations and being part of the huge, happy crowds singing, laughing and moving through the streets.
Most of them felt that God was present in these gatherings of Catholic believers, united in one faith and they felt they belonged to a huge and various community which transcended them in space and time.
Forty per cent claimed that their faith in God had been strengthened and that they now had a closer relationship with Jesus.
A couple of important consequences followed from this as more than half said they were determined to treat others better; to be more considerate and more Christ like. Equally importantly more than a third asserted that now they were not embarrassed to let others see what they believed. They wanted to live as Jesus' disciples.
Nearly all pilgrims enjoyed Sydney WYD and many benefited spiritually.
