“Over twenty young people will travel from Greece to Toronto to participate in the 17th World Youth Day. They represent almost all the Greek dioceses and they have prepared for the event by reading and meditating on the Pope’s message to youth. For those unable to attend, plans are afoot to organize some meetings in Greece, but that’s very difficult, considering how widely dispersed Catholics are over the territory”. In the view of Jesuit Father Teodoro Kontidis, an expert in youth pastoral care and head of the competent office of the Greek Episcopal Conference, “what we will try to do is to transform this group of twenty youths who are going to Canada into a large community of evangelization called to recount to their Greek contemporaries what they will have experienced, seen and understood on the days of the WYD“. “We hope Fr. Teodoro continues – that the message of the WYD will thereafter reach as high a number of people as possible, a kind of ‘evangelic drum beat’ that may especially reach those furthest removed from the Church, who form the majority in Greece”. The hope is that “these youngsters of ours in Toronto may be given a strong experience of the Church and return with renewed faith. Many of them come from isolated areas and from small Catholic communities. To share an experience of faith with other Catholic youth means a great deal, especially for us who form a tiny minority in a country with an overwhelming Orthodox majority”.
