1.5 million people for the vigil with the pope

“A grand event”: a strong human tide of 1.5 million believers swept through Lisbon on Saturday August 5 for the vigil of World Youth Day (WYD) chaired by Pope Francis. The number of people present on a huge esplanade set up for the occasion at the edge of the mouth of the Tagus was communicated by the Vatican, citing an estimate by the Portuguese authorities.

Arriving throughout the afternoon under a blazing sun, bags on their backs and with their sleeping bags, many pilgrims were preparing to spend the night there. The pope appeared inPopemobileshortly after 8 p.m. local time (9 p.m. in Paris) for this giant festival-like prayer vigil which began with songs in a pop-rock tone sung by hundreds of choristers and musicians on the colossal altar which dominates the site of this former landfill.

Evoking in turn football, exams or moments of fatigue, the pope called on young people to “to walk” And “get upin case of failure, engaging in a dialogue with the crowd.

Festive atmosphere

The organizers had said they were expecting around a million people for this evening and the final mass this Sunday morning, the culmination of a week of festive, cultural and spiritual meetings which constitutes the largest international Catholic gathering.

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Amid tents, flags from many countries and temporary sanitary facilities, the young pilgrims started dancing in a festive atmosphere, surrounded by heavy security. “We came on foot from Barcelona, ​​we left 40 days ago… It’s a pilgrimage to see the pope“, told AFP Santi Salvador, a 19-year-old Spanish student in audiovisual communication, who traveled 1,300 km. Tiago Carlos, 30 years old Portuguese, wanted to participate because “it is a great event, for what it represents for us Catholics with people from different cultures“.

On Saturday morning, 200,000 faithful had already gathered at the Fatima shrine in central Portugal, where the pope made a two-hour whirlwind visit to recite the rosary with young sick and disabled people. Contrary to what was planned, François improvised almost all of his first speech, without reading his text, and did not deliver the second. He did not mention the main theme expected for this stage, the war in Ukraine and the search for peace, which he had already spoken about on Wednesday.

The pope had already improvised his speech this Friday. The Vatican spokesman explained to AFP that this change was due to a “visual impairment” because of a reflection on his glasses, but that, this Saturday, it had been “a choiceof the sovereign pontiff.

Walkabout

At Fatima, the spiritual leader of the 1.3 billion Catholics reaffirmed his message for an open Church “to all, without exception“. “The Church has no doors, so all can enter“, he said. Aboard hisPopemobile“, then seated in a wheelchair, Jorge Bergoglio enjoyed a long walkabout on the esplanade surrounding the small chapel marking the place where, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in 1917.

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Blessing and kissing many infants, the pope appeared smiling and blessed the faithful massed along the barriers. A few minutes earlier, the sovereign pontiff had flown over the vast esplanade of the sanctuary aboard a helicopter, in a sky reddened and obscured by smoke and ash caused by a forest fire a hundred kilometers away. He had already gone there in 2017 to canonize two of the shepherds there on the occasion of the centenary of the “appearances“.

Since the beginning of his visit, the longest of a pope in this Iberian country, he has already addressed many topics, such as ecology, social networks, the war in Ukraine, or pedocrime within the Church. . On Thursday and Friday, up to 800,000 faithful flooded the streets of Lisbon before massing in a park overlooking the city center to offer him a rock star welcome, according to figures from the authorities.