1986 · Vatican City

World Youth Day Inaugurated

Pope John Paul II invented a global gathering for Catholic young people in 1986, creating the largest recurring religious event on the planet.

In 1984, John Paul II invited young people from around the world to Rome for a special jubilee gathering, and 300,000 showed up. He was surprised by the turnout and energized by the crowd. The following year, the United Nations declared 1985 the International Year of Youth, and the pope held another gathering. In 1986, he formally established World Youth Day as a regular event, alternating between smaller diocesan celebrations and massive international gatherings held every two or three years in a different host city. The concept was counterintuitive. Conventional wisdom said young people were leaving the Church, that Catholicism was too old and too rigid to attract a new generation. John Paul II disagreed. He believed young people were not indifferent to faith but starved for authentic encounters with it. He was a compelling figure for youth: athletic, multilingual, a survivor of Nazi occupation and Communist rule, and possessed of a personal magnetism that translated across cultures. The gamble paid off. Manila in 1995 drew an estimated five million people, the largest papal gathering in history. Subsequent events in Rome, Toronto, Cologne, Sydney, Rio, Krakow, and Lisbon have drawn millions more. World Youth Day has been criticized as superficial, overly expensive, and more spectacle than substance. Those criticisms have some merit. But it has also given millions of young Catholics an experience of the universal Church that nothing else provides.

Why it matters

Created the largest recurring religious gathering in the world, reaching millions of young Catholics and becoming a signature initiative of John Paul II's papacy.