CWR: "Getting ready for World Youth Day"

From the Catholic World Report blog:

[Editor's note: Fr. Matthew Gamber, S.J. will be blogging for CWR this week from World Youth Day in Madrid, where he is leading a group of 53 college-aged pilgrims from the United States.]

Fluorescent lime green is not usually a color associated with the Vatican or the papacy, but it is the color of the vests that 20,000 volunteers are wearing on the streets of Madrid this weekend, as they prepare to welcome His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI and the hundreds of thousands of young pilgrims who are descending on the city in anticipation of World Youth Day 2011. It would be better to call it World Youth Week, since the festivities begin this Monday on the Feast of the Assumption and continue until the closing Mass on August 21 at a major airfield outside of Madrid, where two million pilgrims and locals are expected to participate. The volunteers are at the churches and parishes, down in the metro stations, at the bus stops, on street corners, and just about anywhere a young pilgrim might be who is lost, has questions, or just wants to talk to somebody about the thrill of being in Madrid for this most thrilling of weeks.

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