| They do have tambourines... Posted Saturday, 02 August 2008 | ||
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World Youth Day is upon us here in Sydney. After years of planning, months of warnings to leave the city and even more months of head scratching as to what World Youth Day actually is, and how a day can last for a week, it has come to pass. The Pope has landed. The leader of the Catholic Church entered the city not in a classic motorcade, but in a boat-a-cade, sailing past the Opera House and Harbour Bridge on his way to Barangaroo. Up to a few months ago this was a busy seaport. Now rechristened after the wife of an early Aboriginal leader, the freight terminal near the heart of the city was conveniently decommissioned just in the nick of time leaving a swathe of prime harbour side concrete free for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to congregate upon. And congregate they have. An orgy of 400,000 bright eyed and bushy tailed young things has descended on Sydney from faraway nations eager to see the Pope with the same zeal usually reserved for someone like, ooh I duuno, Kylie. These Popettes roam the streets in cheery flocks, chanting and clapping. One in each flock will hold a loft a giant national flag - like a tour guide – neatly marrying the passion of religion with the fervour of nationalism. But there are so many flocks and so many flags that mistakes surely must have happened where obedient young things ended up marching behind the right flag but the wrong gaggle. By flags alone it looks like the States has the edge, followed closely by Spain, Italy and New Zealand, and of course, Australia (Pop fact – Australia is more Catholic than Anglican, something to do probably with Anglicans being on the top of the pile and having absolutely no desire to go to a tinder dry island, thank you) . Perhaps this leaning to big Western countries makes sense as it takes a bit of cash to come all this way. Canadian flags are in abundance but Canadians seem to be the world’s proudest flag waving nation - each one tacitly uttering, “We’re not Yanks you know” - so quantity may not be a guide to population size. Interestingly only a few Irish made the trip and I have seen not one British flag. Upon leaving Central Station I spy a flock hanging over the stairwell, passing the time between trains spying on people as they drift below them. As I descend I instinctively look up expecting a globule of spit to be somewhere in my vicinity. But nothing comes cos these kids are simply not normal. They’re not the tearaways you see on TV. They do not hang around street corners. They do not scare old grannies. No, Sydney has been invaded by a multicultural monoreligious array of nice young people and no one knows exactly how to deal with them. Although, you have to wonder that religious or not, it must be awfully difficult for half a million people in the first flush of youth to control their raging hormones. It’s easy to spot the Catholics as all have been given a kind of uniform. A red and yellow fluorescent backpack. As you speed through suburban stations and struggle through the streets it’s easy to see in an instant who is a believer and who is a heathen. They walk amongst us, but at least they are good enough to identify themselves. For some non-religious, more politically minded teenagers the backpacks may as well be gun sights allowing them target the believers and foist pamphlets into their hands about the murky background of Pope Benedict’s Hitler Youth days and then place condoms into their palm. But it may have been difficult for the pilgrims to concentrate on such lofty issues, however, when they were being distracted by the amount of official WYD SYD 08 (for that is the acronym) merchandise to purchase from one of the 11, count ‘em, 11 official souvenir shops which have sprung up from the Opera House to Darling Harbour. Cardinal George Pell, the Bishop of Sydney, has said that commercialism is not at odds with Catholicism. And he’s a man true to his word as alongside the usual guidebooks, official CDs and pen sets come some uniquely Catholic gifts. Pope Benedict fridge magnets, pilgrim scarves, I heart Jesus t-shirts and, naturally, official and exclusive WYD SYD rosary beads. There is even a special meal deal at McDonalds for the pilgrims. By the big mass day some enterprising hawkers had copied the best of the designs and were covering Sydney with I heart Jesus t-shirts. But, we were warned, if it didn’t have the WYD SYD logo it wasn’t real – and presumably the Holy See wasn’t getting a cut. The NSW Government - in their fear that one of the many Catholics may go away from a Sydney with one slightly jaded memory - decided to pass a temporary law that decreed it was illegal to “cause annoyance” to a pilgrim. Which of course, meant most of the politically-minded students in town decided to go out of their way to not only take the NSW Government to court for infringing basic rights, but to also test out what the exact definition of “annoying” was by foisting condoms into the hand of every passing pilgrim. The students won their court case and a thousand set out on an annoying march by blocking the pilgrims from marching en masse to mass. The messages were somewhat confused, though, and ranged from being pro-gay and anti-Pope to pro-abortion and anti-electricity privatisation – although heaven knows what they expected a 12 year old from Tuscany to make of the latter. As a quarter of million young godfans eventually marched past, a thousand protesters was probably about as annoying as a midge near a giant’s ear. But if nothing else it demonstrated to the faithful, who had spent a week with the city more or less bowing to their agenda, that while they were welcome some of the doctrines of their church were less so. But it was hard not to get caught in the sheer scale of the thing. Like Brighton’s Big Beach Boutique which instantly doubled the city’s population, there’s no way you are not going to notice that many bloody people. And when they are twelve deep walking down the street, nonstop for five hours, waving their flags, chatting and laughing, it’s hard not to be blown away that all these people decided to come all this way all at once to see an octogenarian in a white frock. And it’s hard to remember when there were no yellow and red backpacks in Sydney; no giant flags of every nation; no nuns. I’m not sure I’ll miss the backpacks. But when a nun smiles in your direction it’s hard not to smile back. | ||
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