By Rebekah Cheetham, Stephen Hetherington, Mary Hetherington, Joseph Cheetham, St. Cuthbert’s Blackpool

This summer 14 of us from St Cuthberts Parish travelled down to London to join 250 other youths from around England to begin our pilgrimage across parts of Europe to eventually end up in Cologne for World Youth Day. We started of in Canterbury where we had a mass in the cathedral and a penitential to clean ourselves from sins in preparation for our pilgrimage. We travelled through France. Belgium Holland and Germany. During the 10 days we visited numerous places of spiritual interest including Buchcnwald concentration camp, Banneax where Mary appeared to a voung girl and the tomb of St. Boniface. These places were extremely interesting and we got a good insight into the lives of different saints and martyrs which enabled us to strengthen our own faiths. In numerous towns across Europe we evangelised people in the streets, we sang and danced and people gave their experiences to local people, this was an amazing experience because so many non-Christians listened to what we had to say and were interested in Jesus Christ. We eventually arrived in Cologne for world youth day where we joined 1.2million other youths to see Benedict 16th. We heard mass from him and in his homily he stressed the importance of going to church and evangelising people who did not know of God. World Youth Day was absolutely amazing, to see all these youths together worshipping God was an uplifting experience for us all and one we wish to experience again in Sydney 2007.