University Ministry students and staff were among a quarter-million
registered pilgrims to share a sense of Catholic camaraderie “Down
Under” during a two-week summer immersion to MAGiS ’08 and World Youth
Day in Australia, where they communed with the pope, worked with
aboriginal children, and labored on a sheep farm in the outback.
The
joint trip was a first for University of San Francisco students as a
group, said Executive Director of University Ministry Donal Godfrey
S.J., who came up with the idea of the immersion to deepen students’
Catholic identification by being able to express their faith openly and
joyfully, while avoiding a sense of being over or against or better
than anyone else.
The theme of this year’s World Youth Day, held
July 15-20 in Sydney, Australia, came from the scriptures, Acts 1:8 –
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you
will be my witnesses.”
“It was a big success and a profound experience for our students,” Fr. Godfrey said.
Particularly
memorable were the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI by boat into Sydney
Harbor as he was greeted by hundreds of thousands of young Roman
Catholics; touring the streets of Sydney to witness the Stations of the
Cross; and a three-hour pilgrimage through city streets and across
Sydney Harbor Bridge for an evening vigil and Mass with the pope that
culminated in a 250,000-person sleepover under the stars at the Royal
Randwick Racecourse.
In all, about 500,000 attended Pope
Benedict XVI’s final Mass on July 20 at the racecourse, according to
World Youth Day estimates.
"Oh my gosh, 500,000 is a lot of
people!" said USF sophomore psychology major Casey McKinnon, who took
part in the immersion. Much of her time in Sydney was spent meeting
people from any number of the 170 nations in attendance, getting to
know her fellow students, and reflecting, internally, on what it means
to be Catholic, McKinnon said.
“Being a pilgrim on the trip
was such an amazing experience, there was a unifying bond that I felt
wherever I went, even on the plane ride home,” said McKinnon, who
started volunteering with Univeristy Ministry at the beginning of her
freshman year as a tutor for underprivileged school children in San
Francisco.
Helping to drive her reflection was her experience
at MAGiS ’08, a local immersion designed to foster Ignatian
spirituality through service that was held just prior to the official
kick-off of World Youth Day events in Australia. MAGiS, which involved
1,500 pilgrims ages 18-30, was meant to build leaders with a sense of
God’s place in their lives and a capacity to do something to build a
better world.
For some USF students, that meant working with
Aboriginal children in impoverished Bowraville, Australia. For others,
it meant dodging Kangaroos on dirt roads to reach remote Koomooloo
Station, a sheep ranch, where students painted buildings, removed fence
posts and fence wire, sheared sheep, and collected firewood.
For
McKinnon, working with Aboriginal children brought home the realization
of how much she has and how much more she is capable of giving. “I have
so much, and some people have nothing,” she said. “This realization
really started to hit me there in a way that it never had before.”
Working
with the children was her favorite part of the trip and was one of the
aspects of the immersion that helped her to see God in people from all
around the world, McKinnon said.
At Koomooloo ranch, sophomore
psychology and teacher preparation program major Laura Gengler learned
about different cultures, different forms of respect, and the different
ways that God speaks to everyone, through her encounters with other
cultures. “How often do you make friends with people who share the same
passion, the same religion, and the same love for traveling?” Gengler
said. “At World Youth Day, that was every person (I) met.”
