Wednesday, August 24, 2011

WYD - Home Sweet Home

Our Brothers and pilgrims returned today ...but, lest anyone say they missed the past week's sights and sounds, more than ever before, a World Youth Day has been preserved for digital posterity.

From the major Pope-helmed events to breakout catecheses and national gatherings, an extensive on-demand video archive is up and running (with English translations/commentary) thanks to Toronto's Salt + Light, itself the fruit of a prior incarnation of Catholicism's Olympic event.

As a taste of the things that transpired between the headline-grabbers of protests, politics, throngs and thunderstorms, one especially moving moment sticks out -- the turn of a 20 year-old, "born deaf and near death" as he put it, who was chosen to welcome B16 on the pontiff's Saturday visit to a home for disabled young people: