As Sydney pilgrims prepared for the Australian Catholic Youth Festival in Melbourne, the Sydney Catholic Youth Team hoped it would help and encourage the youth in one particular area of concern: isolation.
They shared that many young people feel like they don’t belong, have no community and struggle to find purpose.
So they hoped ACYF would offer an opportunity to reconnect with others, encounter faith in a new way, and rediscover hope.
“I think there is very significant evidence that having a spiritual life helps young people with mental health issues, anxiety, depression, loneliness and so on,” Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP told The Catholic Weekly.
“It doesn’t quarantine you from those things, even people with a great spiritual life can still have those sorts of challenges, but it hugely helps if you are going through challenges like that.”
During the opening plenary on the second day of the festival, Sr Mary Grace SV touched on feeling alone and reminded young people that faith is deeply personal and that God knows them intimately.
“God cares about you. He knows your name before your parents named you,” she said.
“He thought about you before your parents planned for you. And he’s not absent from your life. And he’s calling you today to more.
“I never knew that God had a unique plan for me. I thought God just expected me to make the most of it… But it wasn’t until I experienced God’s love inside of me that I began to believe that he not only cares about what’s going on, on the outside of our lives, but he created me to find him on the inside.”
This message was woven throughout the festival during the day, with workshops on vocations, Catholic identity in a digital world and evangelisation at the dawn of AI. While each workshop sought to help pilgrims get closer to God, there were also subtle reminders for everyone that at the heart of our faith, no one is meant to walk alone.
“If they also discover there’s lots of young people just like them that share a lot of their struggles and their ideals, that again is a huge encouragement,” said Archbishop Fisher.
“I’m not alone. There’s lots like me, there’s thousands like me. If they go to World Youth Day, they discover there’s millions ‘like me’ all over the world.”
In the late afternoon, Archbishop Fisher and Bishop Tony Percy led a discussion and answered questions on faith, politics and friendships.
Many wanted to know how to foster friendship and community in an era where we are seemingly becoming much more polarised – even within our own church.
Archbishop Fisher advised “that we see others not as projects, let alone as enemies, but as potential friends.
“Be a source of unity in a divided world, daring to be different, to be more and better, to be friends.”