Dates set for next World Youth Day

VATICAN, Jan. 24, 01 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has announced the official dates for the next celebration of World Youth Day. The celebration will be held in Toronto from July 23 to 28, 2002.

On Palm Sunday of this year-- April 8-- Pope John Paul II will preside at a ceremony in which the Italian young people who acted as hosts to World Youth Day in 2000 will hand over a symbolic cross to the Canadian organizers of the 2002 observance. Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto will also participate in the ceremony. Following a tradition established by the World Youth Day celebrations since 1984, that cross will be circulated among the dioceses of Canada, the host country, in the months preceding the next observance.

At that same Palm Sunday ceremony, Pope John Paul will also address a special message to the world's youth, on a theme built around the words of Christ, "Take up your cross and follow me."

CWN
24. januar 2001