Day 6: The Closing Mass

The night at Randwick really blended together with the next morning, as a group of pilgrims behind us woke our group up at roughly 3AM with their bongo-drum playing. Eventually they tired of playing drums, and we fell back to sleep until ~5AM, when a cheer was started from the back of the racecourse (“Wake up the pilgrims!” :::clapclap clapclap clapclap::: ad infinitum) to wake up 200,000 pilgrims for the Closing Mass of WYD ’08. (Below: the pilgrims begin to wake up. Above: Wake up, Celeste!)

We ate breakfast while still curled up in our sleeping bags, and joined in Morning Prayer led by a group of seminarians far away on the stage. We were still trying to get up the courage to crawl out of our sleeping bags into the cold morning air when the Pope’s helicopter flew overhead. I jumped out to wave “good morning” to the Holy Father. The helicopter soon landed and the Pope began his long trek back and forth through the crowd in his Popemobile to greet the pilgrims. The Closing Mass was open to the public, so at this point there were about 350,000 pilgrims present at least. Once again I was within 20 feet of the Holy Father. These are moments you never forget. (Below: Steven snaps a picture of the Holy Father as he passes by)

After the Mass, the Holy Father announced the location of WYD 2011: Madrid, Spain! We had had “Catholic bets” going of rosaries, etc. for the past few days about where it would be held, and I came out on top so I was quite pleased. The Pope was adorable and obviously excited to announce the next WYD. We are incredibly blessed to have such a Holy Father at this time. I love him to death and just want to give him a hug.

We began our long trek back to our accommodations (it wasn’t a 10k, but it was 4k to the nearest rail station) and in the meantime lost our Indiana friends in the crowd. Once we were back at Belmore, the Sukkars hadn’t come back yet from Randwick themselves so Leste and I went out to a little Turkish shop in town for pizza (for Leste) and pide (for me) and chatted with Fr. Augustine, the pastor of St. Joseph’s who is originally from India. Eventually the buses from St. Joseph’s came back (with the Sukkars on board) and Leste and I said our goodbyes to Joe and Dominique before going to dinner with the Sukkars at a local Thai restaurant. Yum! (Below: Central train station post-Randwick)

After nice hot showers at their house, we all curled up on the couches in their living room with steaming cups of coffee and plates of the famous Lebonese sweets to watch the network coverage of the Closing Mass. Robert’s brother joined us for a while as well, and soon Leste and I drifted off to bed and sleep.