According to information from the WYD Lisbon 2023 (WYD2023) press office, the symbols - the Pilgrim Cross and the icon of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani - will arrive at 8 p.m. on Thursday at the 4 de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, with the welcoming Mass scheduled for the parish of the Holy Family on Friday, presided by Archbishop Filomeno do Nascimento Vieira Dias, president of the Episcopal Conference of Angola and São Tomé.
For more than a month, the WYD symbols will pass through the Major Seminary of Luanda, numerous parishes and the dioceses of Sumbe, Benguela, Huambo, Viana and Caxito, before returning to the capital, where they will be present at the closing ceremony of the Diocesan Youth Day, on August 13.
From the program so far known, the last ceremony scheduled in Angola will be a mass led by the scouts, on the afternoon of August 17, the day before the return of the symbols to Portugal.
Besides the archbishops of Luanda and Huambo, Filomeno Dias and Zeferino Zeca Martins, respectively, bishops Belmiro Chissengueti (Cabinda), Luzizila Kila (Sumbe), António Jaca (Benguela), Emílio Sumbelelo (Viana) and Maurício Agostinho Camuto (Caxito) have already planned ceremonies in the scope of this pilgrimage.
After the pilgrimage through Angola, and before visiting all the Portuguese dioceses, the symbols will travel to Spain (in September and October of this year) and Poland (on a date yet to be announced).
In 2022, between August 4 and 7, the cross and the icon of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani will return to Spain for the European Youth Pilgrimage in Santiago de Compostela.
It is also planned that the symbols will travel to other Portuguese-speaking countries.
Traditionally, in the months preceding each WYD, "the symbols leave on pilgrimage to announce the Gospel and accompany young people, in a special way, in the realities in which they live," adds a note about the initiative.
With a height of 3.8 meters, the Pilgrim Cross, built for the Holy Year in 1983, was entrusted by John Paul II to young people on Palm Sunday of the following year, to be taken around the world. Since then, the pilgrim cross, made of wood, has begun a pilgrimage that has taken it to almost 90 countries.
"It has been transported on foot, by boat and even by unusual means such as sledges, cranes or tractors. She has passed through the jungle, visited churches, juvenile detention centers, prisons, schools, universities, hospitals, monuments and shopping malls. Along the way he faced many obstacles: from airline strikes to transportation difficulties, such as not being able to travel because he couldn't fit on any of the available planes," the same note states.
"In 1985 he was in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, at the time when Europe was divided by the iron curtain, and was there as a sign of communion with the Pope. Shortly after September 11, 2001, he traveled to Ground Zero in New York, where the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3000 people took place. He also went to Rwanda, in 2006, after the country was ravaged by civil war," he adds.
The icon of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani, which depicts the Virgin Mary with the Child in her arms, is 1.20 meters high and 80 centimeters wide, and is associated with one of the most popular Marian devotions in Italy.
"It is an ancient tradition to carry it in procession through the streets of Rome to ward off dangers and misfortune or to put an end to plagues. The original icon is in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome and is visited by Pope Francis who prays there and leaves a bouquet of flowers before and after each apostolic trip," adds the document released by the WYD2023 press office.
The Lisbon 2023 World Youth Day, for which more than a million young people from around the world are expected, will take place on the grounds of the Tagus River bank, north of Parque das Nações, and is expected to be closed by the Pope.
Originally scheduled for the summer of 2022, the initiative was postponed a year due to the covid-19 pandemic.
