Young people from Goiás on their way to WYD in Lisbon

Vatican News

August is approaching and with it the WYD Lisbon, which will take place from 1 to 6. The balance of the WYD Lisbon Foundation 2023 at the end of last month reported, on the works carried out so far, that 313 thousand pilgrims are registered with the registration process completed and they represent 151 countries. The countries that have the largest number of pilgrims are Spain with 58,531 pilgrims, followed by Italy with 53,803 and France with 41,055. Only then does Portugal appear with 32,771 pilgrims, and the United States of America is in fifth place with 14,435 pilgrims.

Dom Américo Aguiar, President of Fundação JMJ Lisboa 2023, revealed that “one million participants” should be in Lisbon. “When we work on all scenarios, we always work with the number of entries and everyone else,” he said. “I am convinced that we are talking about a group of registered and unregistered young people, about a million participants.”

Many young Brazilians will be present in Lisbon on World Youth Day (WYD) with Pope Francis. On the way to Lisbon, these young men make pilgrimages to various cities in Europe, including Rome. Present these days in the Eternal City is a group of the diocese of Annapolis, Goiás, who visited the Vatican Radio. We spoke with two of them, Paula Cristina and Anderson da Silva Reis.