World Youth Day 2011

The Italian official site of WYD 2011 in Madrid (16-21 August) is www.gmg2011.it. It is operating from today, 8 February, 12 o’clock. Promoted by the National Service for the Youth Pastoral of CEI, it is meant to be a milestone for all the news on the 26th World Youth Day.

“The WYD – said the person in charge of the National Service for the Youth Pastoral, Father Nicolò Anselmi – has always had two characteristics: it is a pilgrimage whose climax is the Sunday Mass, taking place at the end of the Day; it is a fruitful missionary meeting between the hosting Church and the other churches in the world.

The site will accompany this pilgrimage for three years: 2010, the year of preparation beginning; 2011, the year of the meeting in Madrid; and 2012, the year of the account, coming back from Spain. It is a pastoral journey – stated Father Anselmi – not to regard the WYD as an extraordinary fact, but to connect it to the daily pastoral in a closer and closer way”.

The site has sections such as “News”, “Materials and Subsidies”, “WYD Albums”, as well as “Close Examinations” of the documents of Popes about the young and World Youth Days, “Links” to ecclesial media (SIR, Avvenire, TV2000, Radio InBlu) and to the Spanish site of the Day.

Anybody can send news by writing to [email protected]. In connection with the site, there is a weekly newsletter which one can receive through online registration.