Radio Australia Today Editorial

World Youth Day. Gomorrah Redeemed.

23 July 2008

I flew to Sydney (offsetting my carbon emissions of course!) just in time to run into the hordes of young Catholics parading through the city’s streets on the eve of Saturday’s big Randwick love-in.

I grew up in Sydney, and I always found it a disconcerting place. To me it’s always been a city of disconnectedness and some tension. High housing prices, narrow roads and a huge population makes a cocktail that is not the best for goodwill. It’s a city where on any night you can walk into big groups of drunks staggering around the streets being all jolly and exuberant.

Well, on Friday it was a case of even bigger groups of Christians staggering around the streets being all jolly and exuberant.

In their uniforms of bright clothes, backpacks and national flags, the WYD pilgrims were obvious. although it has to be said that there were very few other people on the streets. Sydneysiders were warned to get outta town for the weekend, and to my eye, they did. Traffic was light, trains were largely empty in off-peak times. It was a Sydney as never seen before, crazy on the surface. Dead quiet underground.

Ah, but the exuberance was somethign to behold, and the locals got in on the act too. I was behind a car coming up to a pedestrian crossing. The car slammed on the brakes to let some pilgrims cross. The pilgrims were about ten metres away from the crossing, but the driver wanted to be generous and sharing with them. He got the spirit, so hhe held up the poor drivers behind him with his generosity. But what they hey, this is what a week of spiritual connectedness is all about.

Sydney can be a real Gomorrah at times, but like the Olympics, WYD brought some real, bona-fide joy to the place.

And that can never be bad.
– Phil