World Youth Day Begins!

Today we entered fully into all the World Youth Day activities.  After breakfast in the hotel our parish group and some other seminarians journeyed to the seminary in the southwestern part of Madrid.  We jumped onto the Metro and arrived at the proper station, but didn´t know quite where to go, so we asked around and got directions.  Arriving at the seminary Joey Barvir received his credential to attned the Papal Mass on Saturday morning ONLY for seminarians - by the way, he´ll probably get closer to the Holy Father than anyone else - so we´ll have to have him take some pictures - if they let him take his camera...

After getting credentials we headed a bit north to the Cathedral of Madrid where we, and 1000´s of our closest Catholic friends walked through and stopped to pray momentarily in the Reservation Chapel.  As I walked in, someone in the crowd reached out and tapped my shoulder - turned out to be Annie and Mike, Mary Moyer´s sister and brother-in-law.  As we walked outside the Cathedral James Clement met a good friend from Catholic University who is from California - and Joey Barvir met some friends from the Mount - the Church really is a small world!

We then decided to head back to the hotel for some rest before the evening opening Mass for WYD - but wanted to get some lunch first with our lunch coupons.  Took some time to find a place but after wandering about for a bit and a Metro ride to get a bit closer to our hotel, we had a nice sit down lunch and then got about an hour´s rest before heading out for the Mass.

The jumbotron (on the left), rows of priests and LOTs of kids!

Father Bateman had to leave first - as all the priests of the Diocese were traveling together - leaving our parish group to get there on their own.  And they did GREAT!  They were in the very front section very near to the altar!  They got some great photos that I´ll have to get off their phones and post.  We priests, on the other hand, were off to the left, around the corner and down the street - but at least we had a ¨jumbotron¨ in front of us so that we could see what was going on.  The Mass, which I heard from Brother John Paul, was on EWTN live - so be sure to be tuning in to see what we are seeing!

After Mass we headed back to the hotel - where Bishop McFadden met all of us priests and took us out for ¨tapas¨ - some snacks.  Then back to the hotel for some rest and to begin the first full day of WYD activities.

PS - I did have the opportunity to meet Archbishop Broglio of the Military Archdiocese and tell him that I was one of his new priests - unfortunately I didn´t think about getting a photo.  Next time...