About World Youth Day:

Join us for a spectacular Pilgrimage to Lisbon, Santarem, and Fatima for the 2023 World Youth Day. Together with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Archbishop Nelson Perez, young Catholics from all over the world will come together to participate in this great tradition. In 1985 Pope John Paul II founded World Youth Day. He was inspired by a 1960s movement in Poland where thirteen Catholic Summer Camps would come together for a "day of community". The First WYD was held in 1986 and involved Bishops organizing individual youth events within their Diocese on Palm Sunday. Every three years World Youth Day is a global event, though annually it is held at the diocesan level. There have been 15 World Youth Day's so far, the largest in 1995 when over 5 million youths attended and saw Pope John Paul II in person, making it the world's largest crowd ever recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records. Thousands of young people will undergo the lifechanging and faith affirming experience that is pilgrimage!