New photo book shows impact of World Youth Day Madrid

Madrid, Spain, May 7, 2012 / 15:06 pm

At the release of a new photographic book on World Youth Day Madrid 2011, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela recalled the global youth event as a “powerful” opportunity for conversion.

Titled, “A True Cascade of Light,” the 302-page book features 224 photographs including Pope Benedict XVI’s arrival to his entrance through the Gate of Alcala, his meeting with religious and professors at El Escorial, the Way of the Cross and the stormy evening at Cuatro Vientos Airfield.

The new book, which was edited by Isidro Catela Marcos and photographer Anahi Rodriguez Villalba, also includes all of the Pope's addresses. 

In his prologue, Cardinal Rouco Varela wrote that the event surpassed “our most ambitious expectations” and has had an immediate impact.

He noted that more than 40,000 confessions were heard at Madrid’s Retiro Park during World Youth Day, and that together with the long lines for confession at other stations throughout the city, they were a “sign” of the “very powerful” conversions that took place because of the event.

World Youth Day Madrid was a “lesson in Catholicity” and a call to bring Christ “to all the young people of the world,” regardless of the condition in which they live, he said.

Cardinal Rouco Varela recalled presenting the Pope with the first copy of the new book on Monday of Holy Week and said he gasped as he opened it to see a double-page photo of the massive throng of young people gathered at Cuatro Vientos.