My Catholic friends, here is a question that has been tormenting me since I first heard about the enormous efforts done by the parish in Entumbane to raise enough funds to send their only representative to Madrid for the World Youth Day this month. Is this spiritual event, in the end, an event for the rich and rich only?
Many aspiring pilgrims will be deprived of the opportunity to go. A young parishioner of the Christ the King parish in Hillside explained the situation to me. The price has risen dramatically from ca. 1,000 USD by almost 100 % in the last couple of months. Most probably this happened because the Spanish embassy has abandoned its original plan to subsidize young Catholics from Zimbabwe after a number of parishes in Harare received support from local businesses to cover the cost of trip and stay in Madrid for the period of the WYD. It remains unclear why the embassy of the host nation decided that a couple parishes in Harare represent the whole of the country.
Events like WYD are a very important opportunity for the youth to forge long-lasting connections with their peers in other countries. This is why a better mechanism to enable the participation of young people from developing countries has to be found out, otherwise WYD will remain an elite event with many young people impoverishing themselves and their families to make it there, and the issue of raising money will be downgrading the spiritual aspect of the once-in-a lifetime celebration of Christ. Whose responsibility is this in Zimbabwe: the Church, the youth and their families, socially-responsible business people? We have less than three years till the next WYD to figure it out.
A very intresting question my friend. By no means is this event reserved for elite youths. It is a Catholic event open to all, both Catholic and non Catholic, rich or poor. Let me clarify one or two misconceptions and a few inaccurate points in this article. Yes initial costs were pegged at an estimated $960.00 this was just for the airfare with the pilgrim office in Rome and the WYD Madrid office meeting every other cost excluding pocket money. What made the costs go up first of all was that people took time to pay that 960 and with international travel, costs go up as the date of travel approaches. Secondly, other people dropped out and the bargaining power once used to get to the 960 wasn’t there anymore as the number had significantly gone down.
Let’s move on to the Harare Parishes. At first glance when one is told of the story of the Harare parishes, they automatically put the blame on them for all the mess, but truth be told, the parish in question acted innocently and purely out of ignorance. I was personallly also affected by the situation bt when I looked deeper into the issue I got a clear understanding of the development. Here is what happens with the world youth day; countries are grouped based on wealth quantiles and Zim by the nature of our economy, are classified as a 3rd world country and are just expected to pay for travel. When registration opens, anyone can register at any point as an individual, group, club, parish etc. Over the years, zim had been sending an average of 10 representatives bt last year, the group was 20 times bigger. Now this parish had a group of close to 30 and they registered online booking in a resort town and made payments for that. The pilgrim office based on other years got the impression that this parish was the full zim delegation and had classified us as a more economically developed nation. So when paperwork for all other dioceses started, this parish was already done and ready. When the papers hit the pilgrim office, they then said Zim was not classified as a poor country anymore and so has to pay for registration.
Now that was wrong I admit but the blame is not so much in the parishes for making personal arrangements. Going forward, we have just over 15 months till the next WYD and plans have been made to make it easier for all. Visit http://www.zimwyd2013.org.
Thank you Jacobius for this insight/ Still the question remains for us and our readers – how to make sure that the youths from the families whose annual budget is 960 USD get to participate in the WYD in 15 months?