December 10, 2016

Preparations underway for World Youth Day 2017

REGIONAL
Story and photos by Carolee McGrath

AMHERST – When the nearly 70 pilgrims came home from Krakow, Poland last summer, it was clear that their encounter with Christ at World Youth Day was life-changing. Not long after their bags were unpacked, did participants start planning ways to build on the spiritual momentum.

“An idea came when I came back. I talked to Mrs. Gina Czerwinski, the youth ministry director for the diocese, and Bishop Rozanski, that we have to use those people that went to World Youth Day to Poland for the future of the church,” said Father Piotr Calik, who traveled with the group.

Father Calik, the parochial vicar at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in West Springfield, said the meeting led to the planning of a World Youth Day to be held in the Diocese of Springfield, July 8, 2017, at Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Ludlow. The parish was chosen because 2017 is the 100^th anniversary of the apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, when the Blessed Mother appeared to three peasant children.

“Every year since 1984 there’s been a celebration of World Youth Day, whether internationally or nationally. The next two years are national celebrations,” explained Gina Czerwinski, the director of youth ministry for the diocese.

As part of the preparation for the upcoming 32nd World Youth Day, a kickoff event was held Dec. 9 at the Newman Catholic Center, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Czerwinski, who was also one of the World Youth Day pilgrims, organized the event which included a Holy Hour and social.

“You really are on a high. You encounter people from all over the world that you never thought you’d meet. You encounter Christ in different ways, through prayer services, churches, Mass. We went to eucharistic adoration,” Czerwinski continued.

“Now they’re taking what they learned there and taking it back home to their parishes and communities.”

Among the attendees at the kickoff were teenagers from a Greenfield area youth group, college students and young adults.

During the social, which included pizza, Czerwinski showed a video, highlighting the diocesan contingent in Poland. Twenty-four-year-old Seth Desnoyers, who at the last minute decided to make the World Youth Day pilgrimage, shared his testimony. He explained to the teens gathered that he had fallen away from the faith. But with God’s grace, he said, he found his way back.

“I tried doing it my own way when I went away from the faith and it just doesn’t work,” Desnoyers told iObserve. “The way we truly love is to be like Christ. To me there is no other perfect way.”

Twenty-two-year-old Julia Kozlik, a recent graduate of Regis College in Boston, attended the kickoff and World Youth Day last summer. The registered nurse is a member of Divine Mercy Parish in Three Rivers.

“We have been trying to strengthen the youth programs at our church,” said Kozlik. “Being able to go to Poland with other youth really strengthened that and really invigorated us to come home and bring that same spirit and share that with other youth in our church.”

Three more gatherings leading up to World Youth Day 2017 will be held in the Springfield Diocese on March 24, 2017 at St. Mary Parish in Westfield; April 21, 2017 at Divine Mercy Parish in Three Rivers; and May 12, 2017 at St. Joseph Parish in Pittsfield.

Father Calik said with 2 million young people in Poland on fire for Christ, there is great hope for the future of the church.

“Jesus is at work. We have to trust in him as we did in Poland.”

For a video version of this story, tune in to an upcoming edition of “Real to Reel,” the Diocese of Springfield’s weekly news magazine that airs Saturday evenings at 7 on WWLP-22NEWS.