The next European meeting of youth promoted by the Taizé Community will be held in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, from Tuesday, 28 December 2004 to Saturday 1st January 2005. After the jamboree in Hamburg, at the end of 2003, the Lisbon meeting will mark a new stage in the “pilgrimage of faith on earth” that Taizé has been successfully conducting for over 26 years. It was the Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal José Policarpo, who invited frère Roger, founder of the community, to prepare this meeting in his city. He announced it in his pastoral letter of Sunday 28 March: “In a world threatened by violence and seeking the light to give a new meaning to its future, it’s important that the young become pilgrims of hope. They will come to pray… They want to be the seed of a new sharing between the peoples of the earth. The main inspiration of these meetings is the certain faith that prayer is a power that makes history bear fruit. There are thousands of Portuguese youth who, over the years, have participated in Taizé. We count on them to help us discover the beauty of this pilgrimage of faith”. The cardinal’s announcement was followed by a wave of messages from young people in Lisbon to Taizé, “very keen to participate in the preparations for the meeting”. The first European youth meeting took place in Paris in 1978, the last in Hamburg in 2003.
