World Youth Day 2019 USA Leader Guides Stateside Leader Guide | Page 7

The Stateside and Digital Pilgrims
Your role as a stateside WYD leader is not as In the early twentieth century, events such as
an activities coordinator or a travel agent. the Olympics or the World Cup were the
Rather, you have been called to be a main platforms for large international
pilgrim leader, accompanying young gatherings, but relatively few people
people on a journey towards an encounter experienced them. These were events that
with Christ. The hectic or mundane tasks of newspapers and periodicals vied to report on,
preparing a program for youth and/or young later joined by nightly newscasts on radio and
adults can sometimes cloud the vision of what television. With technology in peoples’
a pilgrimage leader has been called to do. It is homes, these special moments in history were
critical, then, for you, to prayerfully reflect on no longer limited to the few but included
what you are undertaking, and for the young families and friends who gathered and shared
people with whom you will journey. the excitement of the experience close to or in
real time. Today, these kinds of “viewing
Who are the young people who are going to parties”– these virtual experiences – are
your stateside WYD event? They are sons commonplace.
and daughters of God. Each one has his or
her own story. They will come with struggles In recent years, virtual attendance at an event
and pain, as well as joys and anticipation. And such as World Youth Day has become much
they are all young people living in a digital age. more common. No longer restricted to cable
or television media, you can view WYD
Technology has transformed the culture in activities that are live-streamed, find images of
ways that many could never have imagined the Pope on your phone, read blogs from
over three decades ago in 1984 when St. John local people who are there, etc. On Twitter or
Paul II held the first international gathering of Instagram, WYD groups will send virtual
young people in Rome (in what would pilgrims a flood of photos and quotes from
eventually be called “World Youth Day”). The the day's events. Facebook and Google
advances since then have significantly groups can help filter for a particular parish,
reshaped global events and how these events campus, diocese/eparchy, or movement.
are shared and experienced.
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