Organisers of the World Youth Day celebrations were yesterday congratulating themselves on the successful opening of the event, likened to a Catholic Woodstock. It drew an astonishing 700,000 young people to two mass rallies in Rome on Tuesday evening.
Pope John Paul II expressed delight at the festive atmosphere and the enthusiasm of the pilgrims who had thronged the squares in front of the basilicas of St John Lateran and St Peter's, leading him to exclaim: "O Roma felix (Oh happy Rome)".
The Pope had commented privately on the "freshness and spontaneity typical of their age" with which the pilgrims had responded to his invitation to deepen their friendship with Christ and to give witness to their faith, Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini said.
Yesterday the centre of Rome was given over to the visits of the young travellers, dressed mainly in shorts and brightly coloured T-shirts and many of them carrying the national flags of their 160 countries of origin. The usually inflexible guardians of the Holy Door of St Peter's were turning a blind eye to infractions of the Basilica's strict dress code; under normal circumstances visitors wearing shorts are not allowed in.
For the 300 young people from the Dublin archdiocese, Mass and catechesis were led by Archbishop Desmond Connell in the parish church of Nostra Signora di Bonaria in the coastal town of Ostia. Speaking on "Emmanuel - God with us", Dr Connell told an audience of 1,000 English-speaking pilgrims that Christ was alive and present as "the altogether dependable friend of our hearts".
Dr Connell, who recalled Tuesday's second anniversary of the Omagh bombing, said "the poor in spirit" of the Sermon on the Mount were a challenge to the prevailing culture of self-reliance of our time. "The culture in which we live encourages us to be independent individuals, and to see ourselves as the source of our own well-being," he said.
Pilgrimage activities continued with the "festival of forgiveness" at the Circus Maximus, where tents containing open-plan confessionals occupied the space once used for chariot races.