well I arrived at the World Youth Day in
Kharkov it must admit rather exhausted
it was about a 15 hour flight from LA to
Munich that I have to change planes and
so I was kind of worn out but I got
energized pretty quickly because the
first activity was that very night at
the invitation of George Weigel the
great papal biographer I was invited
with some other bishops to an apartment
in a heart of old Chronicle and it was a
gathering of John Paul the second
original youth group these are men and
women now in their high 70s and 80s but
they were the young people that that
Carl boy team was shepherded when he was
a parish priest in in Krakow and it was
very moving because they told stories
and what it was like to be with him keep
in mind he took them on the kayaking
trips and camping trips and really
shared his life with them and also
shared the Catholic faith so during a
pre dar time when the communist
government was trying to stamp out
Catholicism they were trying to
inculcate a sort of dreary atheism in
these young people car avoid tea one was
teaching them a whole different vision
of life and so we were able to you know
kind of pepper them with questions about
what it was like to be with him and I
was there with cardinal Dolan of New
York and Bishop Connolly of Lincoln
Bishop pop rocky of Springfield number
of other a priests and seminarians so it
was just a wonderful moment when I was
talking to them I could see right across
from me into the other room there's a
bookshelf and I'm the one of the shelves
was a framed photograph of the young boy
T WA and he had that that friendly grin
that the whole world eventually came to
know he was also wearing what we would
say today is a pretty hipster pair of
glasses and there he was
that's the way he looked when he was
caring for these people and as they were
telling the stories I had
a palpable sense of his presence there
also as they were telling the stories it
was a hot room was a hot summer night
and the windows were open and we could
hear coming through the open windows the
cries and songs of the young people who
were arriving from all over the world
for World Youth Day and it struck me is
very moving because here I was really
with the core of World Youth Day that's
how it started with his team group you
know in Krakov
and from that little seed has grown this
extraordinary a phenomenon of World
Youth Day so that whole experience was
just very moving
Colonel Dolan had a cool remark he said
you know these people knew him long
before he was Pope John Paul the second
even long before he was Cardinal vojta
they knew him as as their parish priest
and so it's it shows the power of a
pastoral person of parish priest who can
so galvanized young people that in
principle can change the world that was
a wonderful experience
the other great thing happened to me was
the gathering in Mercy center that's the
title that was given to this big indoor
stadium on the outskirts of Krakow and
25,000 young people gathered there and I
could testify it was filled floor to
rafters the whole place jamb they'd
asked me to preside at benediction and
honestly I was thinking something on a
much smaller scale but I get there and
and I'm on for this event in the arena
for 25,000 people well it was really one
of the most moving experiences of my 30
years as a priest
we process in with the Eucharist in this
giant monstrance and there's 25,000
people and music is being played you
know but to watch the reaction of these
young people and I was right behind the
Blessed Sacrament so I could see
everything perfectly and the hands
you're reaching out and the weeping and
people throwing themselves on the ground
you know and all I could think of was it
must have been this way when Jesus
himself walked into a village you know
and people were so caught up in the
excitement of it
but it was just thrilling to me to see
the reaction of these young people and
then we did the the benediction of the
bus sacrament and I had a chance to give
a little 15-minute for Marino and I
think it's fair to say it's the biggest
live crowd I've ever spoken to and I've
spoken to some big ones but this was I
think the largest I talked by the way
about father Jacques Amell the French
priest who was murdered by Isis you know
just as World Youth Day was getting
underway I talked about the power of the
cross and a martyrdom now as I was
speaking I could see hanging from the
rafters of this arena these beautiful
banners of the great polish martyrs of
the 20th century
so there's your Z Papa whoops Cole you
know the the parish priest who was
killed by the Communists there was a
picture of Maximilian Kolbe who was
killed by the Nazis just about Oh a
45-minute Drive from that Stadium in
Auschwitz so anyway the power of the
Cross the power of Christian witness
this extraordinary explosion of
Christian piety devotion made it just a
powerfully moving event I went out to a
number of parishes for these catechesis
which were wonderful they drive you out
to parish and the kids are there and so
the bishops do these and they sing and
they pray and then I give a you know a
half hour talk followed by Q&A followed
by the mass so I did that three days the
bishops of the United States were almost
all of us were staying in a hotel on the
far side of the Vistula River which is
the river that goes through him crackle
so right across from us over the river
is the vaudeville hill and five old hill
is like the spiritual heart of Poland
it's where the the castle of the kings
and the great Cathedral of the
archbishop are so the kings and queens
are buried there all the bishops and
Archbishop's and so on
so I could see it very clearly and I
could also see the bridge that ran from
our side over to that side well the very
young convoy he won when he came to
Krakow off as a student lived with his
dad in that neighborhood steps away from
the hotel where I was and the morning of
September 1 1939
as the Nazi bombs are falling on crack
off as the war begins young cowboy tiwa
made his way across that bridge in a
kind of desperate attempt to contact the
priest he was he was supposed to serve
Mass that day and he wanted to see how
the priest was doing and my point there
is gosh one of the darkest days in the
twentieth century as the Nazi tyranny
now is falling over Poland eventually
over almost the whole of Europe and this
young kid goes running across you know
desperately trying to save his friend
now as he ran across that bridge and
this awful day that was the harbinger of
decades of tyranny and death and
struggle he carried with him a message
the message of the divine mercy because
the year before 1938 his young nun
Faustina Kowalska died in Krakow in the
convent about two miles from that bridge
and the young boy Tebow when he arrived
in Krakow used to go past that monastery
that convent on his way to and from
school and work and he would pray there
in that Chapel and there he learned the
story of Faustina who had received
visions of Jesus offering his mercy to
the world and so young boy T WA at the
darkest moment in the history of 20th
century still carried in his heart this
image of Christ offering his mercy to
the world and see that's what sustained
him and that's what he cultivated over
many decades until at the propitious
moment when that kid now becomes the
Pope and he can offer to the whole world
that image of the divine mercy and how
wonderful that Faustina dies 1938 the
year before this terrible darkness falls
but she in her last gasp if you want
bequeath to the world to this kid the
image of the Divine Mercy which is now
everywhere in the world so I mean all
these thoughts and images and
experiences have been sort of rolling
around in my heart since I was over in
Chronicle and I just think of you know
we're going through a pretty dark time
right now
the 20 century was the worst century in
in human history in terms of of death
and tyranny genocide the 21st century is
not off to a good start as Christians
are persecuted the world over but what I
took away from it was you know in those
wizened phases of the youth group of
john paul ii in those 25,000 wonderful
young faces in the arena and in that
image of the divine mercy within mercy
within mercy i found just a lot of
reason for home