Walking pilgrimage, vigil mirror WYD Lisbon

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

Photography: TOM TRACY | FC

See related stories:

• 'How can we transform the world?'
• World Youth Day: so close to the pope!

HOMESTEAD | There were games, sports, eucharistic adoration, a sacrament of reconciliation station, outdoor Masses, an hours-long walking pilgrimage in sweltering heat and a late-night concert featuring praise and worship bands during an overnight vigil.

All regular hallmarks of a World Youth Day event, typically held in summer at a moveable location since its inception in the 1980s, when Pope St. John Paul II launched the WYD concept challenging Catholic youths to deepen their faith. 

Not to be outdone by their compatriots gathering simultaneously in Lisbon, Portugal, for the official WYD 2023 international gathering, some 200 South Florida teens and young adults added a surprise fireworks display to their own domestic edition of the Catholic youth festival. 

The Miami-based Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a religious community of men and women, joined the Pastoral Juvenil Hispana (Hispanic Young Adult Ministry) to sponsor the weeklong WYD Miami festival. Staged at parishes throughout the region, WYD Miami culminated in a weekend finale at a sprawling retreat space the Pierced Hearts maintain in Homestead, called the Land of the Pierced Hearts. 

Father and son Hernan and Miguel Villacis of Miami Beach were busy setting up their tents in the makeshift family camping section of the festival sleepover as they reflected on what brought them to the event. 

Members of St. Lawrence Parish in North Miami Beach, the Villacis are involved in music ministry and family prayer. Miguel, 14, attends a weekly vocations discernment prayer group hosted by the Pierced Hearts at their Miami center. The Villacis said they would have enjoyed being in Portugal and seeing the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima as a side trip to WYD, but the local edition was a better fit this year. 

“What’s amazing is that I am with the religious community that educated me a lot,” Miguel said, “and to be honest I think this is going to be much more exciting than Portugal. I feel I am going to be closer to the religious community and with my friends and it won't be that huge crowd with the pope.”

“I am looking forward to the procession and eucharistic adoration,” Miguel added.

His father, Hernan, said it was a blessing to mingle with different groups and individuals throughout the weeklong series of events: “the whole week featuring with different parishes, different ways of praying, getting know people and getting to know God and the Virgin Mary. Everybody is coming forward, praying together.”

On Aug. 5, the Saturday of the overnight vigil, the teens, young adults, chaperones and parents joined the religious and clergy for a three-mile walking pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Schoenstatt in Homestead. They sang and prayed along rural Homestead backstreets under a brutally hot and humid late August afternoon. 

Schoenstatt, with its rustic chapel, family center and gift shop, is a local outgrowth of the Schoenstatt Marian movement founded in Germany in 1914. It was among the first of the lay communities that emerged in the 20th century in the Catholic Church. The Schoenstatt movement in Miami offers Spanish-language groups for married couples, women, mothers, children and youths. Casa Schoenstatt also hosts weekly rosaries, Mass, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturday mornings.

The walking Marian pilgrimage to the chapel at Schoenstatt mirrored the long walk that WYD pilgrims traditionally make from their places of lodging to the location of the WYD outdoor vigil and closing Mass with the pope, often with well over one million in attendance.

Pope Francis hosted the WYD Lisbon event Aug. 1-6 following a one-year postponement due to the pandemic. Panama City hosted the last WYD in January 2019. The four-year gap is the longest between the global celebrations in the history of the event. The target age for WYD is generally 18 to 35, not including chaperones and adult leaders.

“We always want to make sure our teens and youth have this opportunity even though they may not have the monetary means” to travel to Panama or Lisbon, said Judith Montalvan, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Miami Beach who serves as lay coordinator of the archdiocesan pastoral council for the Pastoral Juvenil Hispana.

“We created the same environment that you find at WYD here in Miami,” she added, noting that social media platforms were an effective way to reach local families but that still more are welcome at future events. 

The fun activities like volleyball and frisbee games, eucharistic adoration and the live video simulcast of Pope Francis’ WYD messages from Lisbon are among the reasons to participate in the local event, Montalvan said. 

“I would say to families and parents of teens: Create the opportunity, the moments and experiences to open up and bring them out here for a life changing experience they will have in their hearts and memories for the rest of their lives,” she added. 

On hand for the weekend and clearly beaming the WYD joy was young adult Shalom Zambrano, a member of the Pastoral Juvenil Hispana who is also close to the Pierced Hearts community. She said she has never been to WYD and would like to have gone to Lisbon. 

“I always wanted to be at one so this is the next best thing,” Zambrano said. “We feel part of a family here, that we are not alone and that there is someone next to us who could not go to Lisbon but we can make this event here,” she said. “I have made many new friends. My goal here is to get closer to Jesus and know his will for my life.”

Another clearly joyful member of the gathering was Maria Laura Restrepo, a member of St. Dominic Parish in Miami and a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University now studying to be a physician's assistant. She is also part of a lay branch of the Pierced Hearts community. 

The WYD Miami event is built on the premise, she said, that teens and young adults have their own place in the church. 

“I am excited to see a lot of youth here and to learn more about the faith and knowing that they are not alone and they are not the only ones walking on this journey towards their faith and to discern God’s will for them,” Restrepo said. 

“Catholic youth is fun and is not something to be scared or timid about,” she added. “You won't be the only one who is down for going to eucharistic adoration and who wants to go volunteer alongside sisters and brothers.”