What is World Youth Day?
World Youth Day is a great meeting of young people from the whole world around the Vicar of Christ. It is an evangelizing means of the Church, which through these Days continues proclaiming the message of Christ to young people. The WYD is an evangelizing endeavor in which the Church manifests her constant concern for youth:
All young people should feel cared for by the Church: to do so, the whole Church, in union with the Successor of Peter, must feel increasingly committed at the world level, in favor of youth (...) to correspond to their expectations, communicating to them the certainty of Christ, the truth that is Christ, love that is Christ through an adequate formation, which is a necessary and updated form of evangelization (John Paul II, Address to the College of Cardinals, December 20, 1985).

What is WYD’s objective?
The primary objective of the WYD is to make the message of Christ known to all young people worldwide. It is an evangelizing initiative of the Church, with an important ecumenical dimension.
I have very lovely memories of the World Youth Day of Cologne: it was not simply a mass event; above all it was a celebration of faith, a human encounter of communion in Christ. We saw how faith opens borders and really has the capacity to unite the different cultures, and creates joy. I hope the same will happen now in Australia. That is why, I am happy to see many young people, and to see them united in the desire for God and in the desire for a truly human world (Interview of Benedict XVI with journalists during the flight to Australia, July 12, 2008).
Hence, the objectives of WYD are the whole of evangelization: specifically, to make Christ known to young people of our time.
So then, what is the nature of what happens in a World Youth Day? What forces act in it? Some analyses that are in vogue tend to consider these Days as a variant of modern youth culture, as a sort of rock festival modified in the ecclesial sense, with the Pope as star. "With or without faith, in the end these festivals would always be the same; and so the thought is to leave the question of God to one side. There are also Catholic voices that speak in this sense, regarding it all as a great show that, although beautiful, is of little meaning for the question of faith and of the presence of the Gospel in our time. They are moments of festive ecstasy, but which in the end leave everything as it was before, without influencing life profoundly. Looked at in this way, however, the peculiarity of these Days and the particular character of their joy, of their creating force of communion, finds no explanation" (Benedict XVI´s Address to the Curia, December 22, 2008).

Why take part in WYD?
The Pope invites young people from the whole world to go to a determined city to:
· "have a personal encounter with Christ that will signify a confirmation in the faith and an interior conversion which in Catholic young people should lead to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. These meetings constitute the stages of a great pilgrimage through the planet, to manifest how faith in Christ makes us all children of the one Father who is in heaven and builders of the civilization of love" (Benedict XVI, Angelus, Sunday, July 27, 2008)
· to know the Catholic Church for what it is: the great family of the children of God, which shares with young people her most profound aspirations, concerns, sorrows and joys.
· to exercise charity and solidarity, which should be the fruit of the personal encounter with Christ in the sacraments and in prayer. That is why it is hoped that this WYD will stimulate a new endeavor of solidarity in the service of the Church and of society.
· to rediscover the profound exigencies of their baptismal vocation and the mission that accompanies that vocation. The Vicar of Christ reminds them that they are called to be witnesses of Christ in all realms of society, and that their mission is to take the Gospel to other young people through their personal witness and their apostolate.
· "This World Youth Day became a new Pentecost, which stimulated the mission of young people, called to be apostles of their contemporaries, as so many Saints and Blesseds and, in particular, Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati, whose relics, placed in Sydney´s cathedral, were venerated by an uninterrupted pilgrimage of young people. Each boy and girl was invited to follow his example, to share the personal experience of Jesus, who changes the life of his "friends" with the force of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the love of God" (Benedict XVI, Angelus, Sunday, July 27, 2008).