Dates for World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon announced

Rome Newsroom, Oct 5, 2021 / 07:00 am

The dates of the next World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon, Portugal, have been announced.

The world’s largest gathering of Catholic young people will take place on Aug. 1-6, 2023.

Making the announcement on Oct. 3, Cardinal Manuel Clemente, the Patriarch of Lisbon, said: “We hope that the 22 months that will lead us to WYD might be a time of evangelization for all.”

World Youth Day was established by Pope John Paul II in 1985. The week-long gathering usually attracts hundreds of thousands of young people.

The international event is typically held on a different continent every three years with the presence of the pope.

Pope Francis announced that the Portuguese capital would host the global Catholic gathering of young people at the closing Mass of the last international World Youth Day in Panama City in January 2019.

Lisbon, a city of 505,000 people, is around 75 miles from Fatima, one of the most visited Marian pilgrimage sites in the world. A report on “European Young Adults and Religion,” published in 2018, found that Portugal has one of the highest levels of weekly Mass attendance among young people in Europe.

The organizing committee for the Lisbon event said that it decided to announce the date on Oct. 4 in honor of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

World Youth Day in Lisbon was initially scheduled for August 2022, but the Vatican announced postponed the event by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The bishop overseeing preparations for World Youth Day 2023 told CNA in an interview earlier this year the event will be an opportunity to renew hope in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I wish WYD Lisbon 2023 to be from and to all the people and that it can mean an opportunity to renew the hope in the post-pandemic period,” Bishop Américo Manuel Alves Aguiar said.