A Woodstock for Catholics?

The Catholic Church's World Youth Day festival is proving a success, despite rows over free speech, ecumenicism and clerical sex abuse, writes Pádraig Collinsin Sydney.

THE SHEER NUMBERS surrounding the Catholic Church's World Youth Day (WYD) celebrations are daunting. Half a million people are expected to attend tonight's evening vigil mass with Pope Benedict XVI in Sydney (125,000 of them from 177 countries other than Australia). There are 8,000 volunteers, 3,000 media, 2,000 clergy and a worldwide TV audience of one billion.

Those numbers don't come cheap. The cost to Australian taxpayers is €100 million, with the Catholic Church spending €92 million on top of that. It's not all money going out though; the New South Wales government estimates the state will reap an economic benefit of €120 million from the pilgrims.

Sydney has seen nothing like it since the 2000 Olympics, and only an absolute curmudgeon could deny that these well-behaved young visitors from around the world have added great colour and vibrancy to the city all week. If the weather is anything to go by, they might argue that God is truly on their side. It's winter here, but the predicted rain hasn't come and last week's cold snap has not been repeated.

WYD began when Pope John Paul II, on Palm Sunday 1984, celebrated the Holy Year of Redemption with the youth of Rome. A year later, International Youth Year was celebrated in Rome.

Every two or three years since then, WYD has been celebrated around the world in cities such as Buenos Aires, Manila, Toronto and Cologne.

Each celebration has had a different theme, with this year's being "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). But it was a power from another source that caused headlines around the world. An act of the New South Wales parliament created a law allowing for detention or heavy fine for anyone causing "annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event".

A case against the law was taken by Rachel Evans and Amber Pike of the NoToPope Coalition. Though many saw them as little more than disaffected students, they were right. The law was nebulous to the point of meaningless and the federal court agreed.

The court threw out the law as the WYD celebrations began on Tuesday. The judges said the use of the word "annoyance" was invalid because it "affects freedom of speech in a way that, in our opinion, is not supported by the statutory powers". They added that there was "no intelligible boundary" on what "causes annoyance".

To its credit the church had distanced itself from the annoyance law - and had not requested it in the first place - and the WYD pilgrims did not need to be wrapped in cotton wool to protect them from a few peaceful protests.

THE ATMOSPHERE around Sydney all week has been undeniably fun. An American girl was pictured wearing a T-shirt saying: "Does this shirt make me look Catholic?" Everywhere you go there are happy young people singing and carrying flags from around the world, and not just the usual suspects such as Ireland, Italy and the South American nations, but also from countries not often thought of as hotbeds of Catholicism such as Sweden and Pakistan.

Around 800 Irish people have made the long journey to WYD, with 102 from the diocese of Ferns staying at the Holy Family School in Lindfield in north-western Sydney. One of their number, Melissa Freeman (20) from Ballywilliam, Co Wexford, is greatly enjoying her time in Sydney. "We've met people from other parts of Ireland and also from Canada, Poland, Guatemala, Paraguay, all over. It's a great way to bring people from all around the world together to express their faith," she says.

Christina Connell (23) from Geelong, Victoria is attending her second WYD. "I was in Cologne three years ago and it's interesting to see the comparison," she says. "In Cologne the city was unprepared for the numbers. But here the support from the state government, police and wider community has made it all very well organised.

"I went with a Dublin group to Cologne. We kept in touch by email and they are in Sydney now. The coming together of people from so many different backgrounds and cultures inspires the spiritual growth that young people experience at World Youth Day. It helps you realise how widely diverse the Catholic culture is."

It is expected, though by no means certain, that the Pope will offer an apology to the Australian victims of clerical sex abuse at tonight's Mass in Sydney. The uncertainty has not been helped on Wednesday when Bishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney said some people were "dwelling crankily on old wounds", in response to criticism about how the church handles abuse cases.

Bishop Fisher was referring to the case of two sisters who were repeatedly raped by Fr Kevin O'Donnell in Melbourne while they were in primary school. At the age of 26, Emma Foster killed herself earlier this year after suffering from anorexia and drug abuse.

Her younger sister, Katherine, turned to alcohol and now needs 24-hour care after being hit by a car.

Their father Anthony Foster said the bishop's comments were "disgusting, given that our daughter only died six months ago".

"We need an apology and we need action. And if he (the Pope) doesn't do that and there isn't some good action, then the situation becomes worse because it further exacerbates the pain and suffering that the victims have to go through."

RELATIONS BETWEEN Catholicism (Australia's biggest religion at 26 per cent of the population) and Anglicanism (the second biggest at 19 per cent) may have taken a dent this week following an extraordinary video interview with Phillip Jensen, the Anglican Dean of Sydney, where he was giving his views on World Youth Day.

A partial transcript of the interview appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday and revealed the Dean saying: "If Martin Luther came into Sydney and saw Roman Catholicism and its Stations of the Cross, he'd say, 'Ah, they've cleaned up their act'. . . But no.

"Things are actually worse than in Luther's day . . . since the Reformation we've had the infallibility of the Pope, the sinlessness of Mary, the bodily assumption of Mary. These things show you that Roman Catholicism has moved since the Reformation - but it has moved further away from us, not closer to us."