World Youth Day 1985 ( it, Giornata mondiale della gioventù 1985) was a meeting on the occasion of the

International Youth Year The year 1985 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Youth Year (IYY). It was held to focus attention on issues of concern to and relating to youth. The proclamation was signed on January 1, 1985, by United Nations Secretary Gen ...

held in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

on March 30 and 31 1985 and it was the second great international meeting promoted by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and later named

World Youth Day World Youth Day (WYD) is an event for young people organized by the Catholic Church that was initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1985, sometimes nicknamed in later years as the "Catholic Woodstock". Its concept has been influenced by the Light-L ...

. This was considered the birth of these events, which would begin to be called of this way on the next year. After the Youth Jubilee celebrated in Rome the year before on the occasion of the

Holy Year A jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon. In '' Leviticus'', a jubilee year ( he, יובל ''yūḇāl'') is mentioned to occur every 50th year; during which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgi ...

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

organized a youth gathering for

Palm Sunday Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Hol ...

in 1985 coinciding with the International Youth Year proclaimed by the UN.

Before the event

Before the young people arrived in Rome, the Pope issued on December 8, 1984, a message for the World Day of Peace devoted to the young. Then John Paul II invited the youth to

to Rome for the World Youth Meeting. The Pope chose Palm Sunday as the date of the meeting because in the previous year, just on Palm Sunday, the

celebrated the Jubilee of the Youth, celebrated on the occasion of the Holy Year 1983/1984 (1950 anniversary of the death and resurrection of

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

The program

Saturday 30 March

The Pope met the young Catholics for the first time in

Archbasilica of St. John Lateran The Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Lateran ( it, Arcibasilica del Santissimo Salvatore e dei Santi Giovanni Battista ed Evangelista in Laterano), also known as the Papa ...

at 5:00 pm. The slogan of this great meeting were the words: May you know how to realize the hope that is in you (

1 Peter The First Epistle of Peter is a book of the New Testament. The author presents himself as Peter the Apostle. The ending of the letter includes a statement that implies that it was written from " Babylon", which is possibly a reference to Rome ...

3:15). During this meeting the

apostolic letter Ecclesiastical letters are publications or announcements of the organs of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority, e.g. the synods, but more particularly of pope and bishops, addressed to the faithful in the form of letters. Letters of the pop ...

"To the young people of the world", written by the Pope for the occasion, was presented firstly to those present. During the following night, there was the possibility for young people to watch in eucharistic adoration at some churches in the city.

Sunday, March 31

The following morning, starting at 6:00 WYD participants formed three parades, which joined at

Via della Conciliazione Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation) is a street in the Rione of Borgo within Rome, Italy. Roughly in length, it connects Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. The road was constru ...

to reach

St. Peter's Square Saint Peter's Square ( la, Forum Sancti Petri, it, Piazza San Pietro ,) is a large plaza located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, the papal enclave inside Rome, directly west of the neighborhood ( rione) of Borgo. B ...

together - where the final

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

would be celebrated. The sources attest in the morning the presence of about 250,000/ 300,000 people from 70 countries, mostly Italians; but there were about twenty thousand

Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both in ...

and five thousand pilgrims from Eastern European countries (primarily

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

and

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

). Young people from

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

were also present in Rome, as also from

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and the

Far East The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The ter ...

. Also noteworthy are the presence of other Christian confessions (especially

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Protestants), and even non-Christians (including four hundred Japanese Buddhists).

The event

Although it is not a real WYJ (it is considered a sort of "zero edition"), this meeting has some traits that will characterize all future international events of WYD: for example, participants are given a "pilgrim's bag" and a cap with the logo of the day; for hospitality to pilgrims a network of accommodation facilities in the area is activated; an anthem is composed for the occasion.

The anthem

The song "Resta qui com noi" by the musical group Gen Rosso (texts by V. Ciprì and music by B. Enderle) was composed for the gathering and inaugurated the tradition of adopting an official anthem for each World Youth Day.

The establishment of WYDs

Given the success of the day, the Pope on next December 20 officially proclaimed the establishment of the

s, which will be held every year in all the

diocese In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associa ...

s of the world on Palm Sunday (in 1986 it would be called the alternation on two-year cycle diocesan editions and world editions in a city selected by the

Pontifical Council for the Laity The Pontifical Council for the Laity was a pontifical council of the Roman Catholic Curia from 1967 to 2016. It had the responsibility of assisting the Pope in his dealings with the laity in lay ecclesial movements or individually, and their co ...

). John Paul II after World Youth Meeting in Rome decided to announce World Youth Day in 1986.

References

{{World Youth Day Catholic Church in Italy History of Rome World Youth Day Religion in Rome 1985 in Italy March 1985 events in Europe