World Youth Day is the single largest Roman Catholic event in the world and some have estimated that as many as 1.5 million people may have attended the 2023 event on Saturday, August 5th, to see Pope Francis and participate in the Saturday evening vigil in Lisbon, Portugal.
The events, which are the first since the coronavirus pandemic, began last week, with the first Holy Mass being celebrated on August 1st. Tens of thousands of people participated in the first Mass but some heavily criticised aspects of it, particularly the modernist take on the celebration.
The traditionalist Catholic blog OnePeterFive slammed the aesthetics of the platform and altar used at the Mass, describing it as “a pseudo-high altar asymmetrical Lego/Minecraft-looking cubed edifice that lifted one’s mind to contemplate the limits of scaffolding, and certainly not the Divine.”
A perceived lack of reverence was also criticised, particularly during Holy Communion, as the organisers of the event deployed lay people to hand out the Holy Eucharist as extraordinary eucharistic ministers, rather than priests.
Roman Catholics believe that the bread of the Eucharist quite literally becomes the body, soul, and divinity of Christ and many traditionalists adhere to strict codes of conduct regarding it, such as only receiving the Eucharist from priests, on the tongue (rather than in the hand) and more often than not, while kneeling as a sign of reverence.
However, it was not only aspects of the opening Mass that were criticised by traditional Catholics, as some expressed dismay that consecrated hosts were being kept in plastic containers prior to the weekend Masses.
Father Ronald Vierling highlighted the issue on X, the social media giant formerly known as Twitter, saying, “I understand the challenging logistics of offering Holy Communion to over a million people, but in these days of diminished belief in the Real Presence, the set-up depicted in the above photos quite frankly treat the Holy Eucharist as an after-thought. A teaching moment lost.”
Other priests were more sympathetic to the situation, such as Father Sean Gough who claimed the sheer logistics of being able to give communion to 1.5 million people was a major challenge:
These posts are so infuriating. You’d think the Lord was being kept in the plastic bag on the floor! If u’re [sic] going to complain, at least propose a better idea for distributing Communion to 1.5 million people spread over many square kilometres!!
Dr. Taylor Marshall, a popular traditionalist YouTuber and Catholic commentator, commented on the pictures saying, “Whoever set this up hates Christ.” He later criticised World Youth Day as a whole saying he would not let his children attend.
Over the weekend, another incident caught the ire of the traditionalists on social media when a video of a priest appearing to DJ electronic music during a World Youth Day event was spread.
World Youth Day was originally created by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1986 and is staged every three years in a different city around the globe, always being attended by the current head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Francis, 86, attended this year’s celebrations and called for Catholics to welcome everyone into the church, including LGBT people.
“The Lord is clear,” Pope Francis said on Sunday and added, “The sick, the elderly, the young, old, ugly, beautiful, good and bad.”
Shortly before departing for Portugal, Pope Francis gave an interview to a Spanish magazine in which he stated that he had multiple meetings with transgender individuals at the Vatican, going so far as to call them “daughters of God.”
The comments were puzzling given Pope Francis’ prior comments on gender ideology, which he has condemned as “ideological colonisation” in a discussion with Polish bishops in 2016.
“Today children—children!—are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this [is] terrible!” he said.
“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Pope Francis said in an interview this year and added, “Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women.”
Around 700 bishops and 10,000 priests also attended the closing Mass on Sunday in which Pope Francis called on young people to follow Christ’s example to be “sensitive to situations all around us, to other cultures, to the pleas of the poor and vulnerable, and to the cry of our wounded and mistreated earth.”
“How good it is to listen to Jesus, to listen to one another, and thus to become capable of dialogue in a world where so many people go through life alone and concerned only with themselves,” he added.
Following the celebrations, Pope Francis announced that the next World Youth Day would take place in 2027 in Seoul, South Korea, marking the second time ever the event will happen in Asia.
