ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

From July 22 to July 28, 14 Fordham students and two chaperones from Campus Ministry, Carol Gibney and John Gownley, travelled to Rio de Janeiro to attend the World Youth Day celebrations. World Youth Day is a gathering of Catholic youth from every corner of the globe once every two to three years to celebrate cultural diversity and a shared faith and commitment to love and service. Approximately 3.7 million youth attended the mass at Copacabana Beach, held on the final day of the gathering, which was presided over by Pope Francis himself.

“World Youth Day was as an invitation for Catholics to share and reflect upon their experiences and to delve deeper into their journey of faith,” Jennifer Monsalve, FCRH ’14, said. “[Meeting other youth from around the world] was a wonderful opportunity, overcoming all barriers such as nationality and language.”

Monsalve felt that she learned a lot about her spirituality and appreciated the experience of being able to relate to peers who undergo similar faith-related struggles despite living in another part of the world.

“Getting to meet people with immense passion for their faith and spirituality was one of my most favorite aspects of World Youth Day,” Monsalve said. “Seeing people my own age undergo similar struggles in their faith helped me relate to my peers and tap into my own spirituality.”

Fordham students arrived in Brazil on July 11 to attend a program known as MAGIS, an intimate congregation designed to prepare 2,000 youth of ages 18 to 35 from different Jesuit universities and parishes throughout the world for the World Youth Day experience.

The MAGIS program has a strong foundation in Ignatian spirituality and means “more” when translated from Latin. The youth received a chance to contemplate and reflect upon their faith in smaller groups and participated in service projects outside the city of Rio de Janeiro.

“My favorite part [of the trip] had to be MAGIS for a host of reasons,” Stephen Gan, FCRH ’14, said. “The immersion in Brazilian culture was one of the highlights of the trip, as were

the friendships I developed throughout the program. [My friends and I] bonded over dressing up as clowns, guitar playing, feasting and sleep deprivation over the course of a week and by the end, we were inseparable.”

Although he found his experiences difficult to articulate in words, Gan learned more about his faith and the world around him during his time with the MAGIS program.

“Putting what I learned from the trip into words would be like giving birth to a fully grown hippopotamus,” Gan said. “I learned that people of all faiths, languages, socioeconomic backgrounds and ideologies have common ground in love and kindness no matter how hard they try to deny it. In the very quintessence of our humanity, we are inexplicably and inextricably linked as a community of pilgrims.”

Another Fordham student who attended World Youth Day with the St. Sebastian parish, part of the Diocese of Brooklyn, felt that it was truly a life-changing experience.

“Before going on this pilgrimage, I was convinced that the Catholic Church is a dying church, quickly losing relevancy in a modern world,” Katherine Valles, FCRH ’14, said. “After seeing millions of pilgrims my age united in one faith, despite all of our regional differences, I have realized how wrong that mindset was.”

Valles felt inspired after listening to Pope Francis’s speech during the mass at Copacabana Beach and admired his humility.

“After hearing Pope Francis speak about how the youth are the future of the Church and seeing the massive attendance at WYD, I realized that the Catholic church is still vibrant and evolving.  I think that the direction towards which the church will change and grow might rest on the faithful of our generation.”