The first World Youth Day to be hosted in a country where Christians are a minority will seek to instil young people with the courage to share the Gospel while fostering interreligious dialogue, organisers of the event said. Source: CNS.
World Youth Day 2027, to be hosted in Seoul, South Korea, will help young people “think about the dialogue between faith and modernity,” Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life said at a news conference yesterday.
The challenges young people face today – a loss of purpose, climate change, the digital revolution and economic inequality – “will stimulate young people to make their personal contribution so that contemporary culture may be permeated and transformed by the Gospel, with its power, light and freshness”, the cardinal said.
And in Asia, a continent “receptive to the coexistence of cultures, dialogue and complementarity”, the cardinal said young pilgrims will advance “on their path of learning to become messengers of peace in the world so torn by conflict and confrontation”.
At the closing Mass for World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal – attended by an estimated 1.5 million young people – Pope Francis announced that Seoul would host the next World Youth Day, in 2027, following a celebration of young people at the Vatican during the Holy Year 2025.
“Thus, from the western border of Europe it will move to the Far East,” the Pope said. “This is a marvellous sign of the Church’s universality and of the dream of unity to which you bear witness.”
World Youth Day has been hosted in Asia only once before – World Youth Day 1995 was held in Manila, Philippines.
The Vatican announced yesterday the themes for the church’s upcoming celebrations of young people, both taken from St. John’s Gospel: the Jubilee of the Youth, to be held in Rome in 2025, will have the theme “You also are my witnesses, because you have been with me,” and the theme for World Youth Day 2027 will be “Take courage! I have overcome the world.”
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WYD 2027 in South Korea to focus on courage, interreligious dialogue (By Justin McLellan, CNS via USCCB)
