Paula Fernandez
Lisbon, Aug 6 (EFE).- After trips, walks in the sun and nights sleeping in the open, young people are beginning to leave Lisbon today, after a World Youth Day (WYD) that leaves them charged with faith, new friendships and with a lesson: “I have learned to realize how lucky we are, not everyone can experience this.”
Raquel, an 18-year-old from Madrid, summarizes for EFE with this phrase the experience she has lived in the last week in Lisbon from the Oriente station, near where Pope Francis has just officiated the final mass with a million and a half people. .
Thousands of pilgrims, loaded with backpacks, sacks and mats that they have used to spend the night in Parque Tejo while waiting for the farewell mass officiated today by the Pope, run from one side to the other in the station, with traces of fatigue. obvious on the face.
The experience has been “very hard” but, says Raquel, it has been worth it: “There are moments when we say ‘I want to go back now’, but then you think that it is once every several years, that you will never catch up at this age and so close to your country, and you don’t regret it so much,” he jokes.
He takes home, above all, the new friends he has made during this week.
“It has been very impressive to see so many people, because you knew they came from all over the world, but then, seeing all those crowds and knowing that we are all here for the same reason, it is very impressive,” says Geomar, a 20-year-old years also from Madrid.
Minutes before, Geomar and his friend Maria were exchanging bracelets with a group of Italian pilgrims.
“It is one of the challenges that we have achieved, giving them objects that we brought from home, something that we liked, a bracelet, and they exchanged their things with us, has been able to unite us more as Christians”, explains María.
They also take the faith and messages of the pontiff.
“I was very surprised by the great charisma of Pope Francis, everything he has said has touched my heart and having experienced it with so many people is something precious,” he says.
To hear that message, they spent the night sleeping rough in Parque Tejo, although after a week on the floor of a sports center “you end up sleeping well everywhere,” says Geomar. “A priest DJ woke us up this morning,” he says between laughs.
Geomar and María return to Spain this Monday by bus. Others, who come from further afield, will continue their spiritual journey after Lisbon.
FROM LISBON TO ROME
“We’re going to Italy because we want to visit the Vatican,” says Mari, a 33-year-old from Guatemala waiting with her group to leave for the airport and take a flight to Rome.
The trip has been “a bit long, very tiring”, they miss the food at home and their backs are sore. But “it’s been so worth it” and it’s part of the experience, he adds.
“Jesús is not one of comforts or luxuries and we adapt to everything,” he says.
Many blessings are brought to Guatemala: “All those who wait for us there also receive the message and blessings that we bring, everything that the Pope has taught us and what we share with the other pilgrims.”
On her wrist she wears almost a dozen bracelets that she has received these days from other young people.
A few meters away, an American boasts of the enormous Spanish flag that he has exchanged with another pilgrim and that he has tied to his back.
It is one of the great legacies of WYD: friendship. EFE
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(photo) (video)
