These honeymooners head to World Youth Day

Panama City, Panama, Jan 26, 2019 / 15:12 pm

At World Youth Day, there are tens of thousands of pilgrims, thousands of priests and religious sisters, and hundreds of bishops. But there are very few honeymooners. Nadia Giudice and Alberto Celi might, in fact, be the only ones.

The pair got married Dec. 8, 2018, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and knew immediately they would go World Youth Day Panama 2019 for their honeymoon.

The couple are part of an Argentine delegation to the event. Along with about 2,500 pilgrims from Argentina, they participated in a Mass celebrated Jan. 23 at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Panama City.

She's 25 and he's 26, and they met, unsurprisingly, at Church- an event sponsored by the Legion of Mary,  in the Santa Fe province of Argentina.

"We got to know each other, became friends and later got engaged. We were married December 8, Our Lady's feast day, and this is our honeymoon," Nadia told ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish language sister agency.

For his part, Albert confessed "never in our lives had we dreamed of this."

"We couldn't go to WYD Rio for different reasons and we thought we were never again going to have the possibility. Krakow was completely out of the question but when they told us that it was going to be in Panama we said: it's now or never," he explained.

Nadia said they chose this Wold Youth Day because "we could see that by the next time we would probably have children, so it was going to be more complicated for us to think about going as pilgrims, to be walking a ton and all those things."

"If you really believe God is calling you to marriage, and your courtship was really done in prayer, and you prepared yourself always in prayer, and you believe you found the person, then you have to go all in and trust in God," Nadia said.

"One of the things that stuck with me at the vocations fair is that it doesn't matter to what vocation you're called by God, there's always going to be difficulties, and by our own means it's impossible to fulfill it,  but trusting completely in God, in Him we can do everything," Alberto concluded.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.