We Want to Convert the Young People to Christ, by Regis Martin

At his very last World Youth Day appearance in 2002, Pope St. John Paul II — who, for all his years and infirmity remained forever young — reminded hundreds of thousands of young people who had come to Toronto to celebrate their faith that, in the words of Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world.”

It was the ninth such event since he had first entrusted the young with the joy and the challenge of carrying the message of Christ to the world. When the idea of World Youth Day first came to him in 1985, he envisioned it in precise Christocentric terms. He was determined not to leave Christ out of the mix, to relegate him to the margins of human experience. “I imagined a powerful moment,” he said, “in which the young people of the world could meet Christ, who is eternally young, and could learn from him how to be bearers of the Gospel to other young people.” …

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