thirteen ways

No sooner had I planned and booked, with great love and clinical precision, a 10-day jaunt around my favorite cities in Oz than I discovered that my trip to Sydney would exactly coincide with World Youth Day. True, I am (relatively) young; true, I like…um…the world; true, a big one-day multicultural party did sound like a lot of fun. 

But World Youth Day was not what it seemed.

A hint could be found in the “theme” for this year’s festivities:

‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.’ Acts 1:8

Although you won’t find mention of it on the WYD website, this was an event organized by the Catholic church, a somewhat desperate attempt to mobilize young people at a time when few under-40s would be caught dead at Sunday mass. It neither occurred on one day (packing events into one week), nor involved a great number of young people (there seemed to be a surprising number of over-40s).

Much of Sydney’s downtown area was closed to traffic to make way for 300 000 hyperactive Catholics from around the world, who, draped in their country’s flags and sporting bright orange-and-yellow backpacks, strode the streets singing Christian rock and chants like “U-S-A, U-S-A” and “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!” (At least they were readily identifiable.) The nationalistic fervor was certainly surprising for an event preaching universal love and understanding.

Below, a view of the “pilgrims” on their “pilgrimage” (which to judge from some WYD participants’ comments seemed like more of a tourist photo-op than a blood-sweat-n-tears, hard-yakka struggle) across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I really couldn’t escape…

I even got a glimpse of the Papa, who glided through Sydney in the pope-mobile, as I sipped Toohey’s in a friend’s well-appointed flat:

How curious that a Mozart- and Bach-loving Pope, who has spoken out against the evils of popular music (calling it the “work of Satan“), should be the rock-star figurehead of an event that often appeared to be little more than a Christian-themed rock music festival. A pianist friend of mine actually played chamber works by Schumann (the Piano Quintet and oboe Romances) in two private concerts for the Pope soon after he arrived. After she sweated and strained through the quintet’s strenuous piano part, the Pope approached her: “You have worked very hard.”

WYD merchandise hung in every shop window, and even the George Street beggars were trying to lure the pilgrims with the promise of redemption.

And the cost to taxpayers? 163 million Australian dollars in State and Federal funds. 

My favorite WYD-related moment during the week came when I visited the Biennale of Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art (a fabulous building on Circular Quay, across from the Opera House…god, how I love Sydney!!).

My Biennale-viewing day coincided with WYD’s “Stations of the Cross” event. Live video of this quite crass display was broadcast on a cinema-sized screen next to the MCA, and once Jesus had been suitably crucified (with the Sydney Opera House visible in the background) the WYD pilgrims, somewhat surprisingly, began to file into the museum, where they were greeted by this Leon Ferrari sculpture, hanging from the ceiling: