‘Sharing joy through service volunteering at World Youth Day’ Jersey Catholic article features CU staff member

Image above: Colette Liddy in Reconciliation Park in Lisbon, Portugal for World Youth Day prior to the opening.

Colette Liddy, director of news and media relations, was one of more than 25,000 volunteers at World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon, Portugal.  

In an interview with Jaimie Julia Winters, editor of Jersey Catholic, the news site of the Archdiocese of Newark, Liddy said, “Over the years, I have had sisters, a brother, and a niece who have gone to World Youth Days in Denver, Rome, Paris, and Toronto so I knew how wonderful World Youth Days were, and I wanted to serve in any way I could.

“It was a gift to volunteer in Reconciliation Park where confessions were offered to pilgrims in multiple languages,” Liddy shared with Winters. “I was part of the team that worked in one of the tents checking out the priests after they heard the confessions. It was a beautiful experience to speak to so many priests from so many ends of the earth and to work with volunteers from around the world.”

The City of Joy featured a vocational fair where young people could learn about religious orders, associations and movements, a chapel where Mass and Eucharistic Adoration were held, and Forgiveness Park, run by a team led by Father António Silva. The confessionals were made by prisoners in Portugal.  It was the same park where Pope Francis heard confessions a few days later.

“Before I went on the trip, a priest told me that it was John Paul II’s vision that young people would run WYD. This was quite my experience,” Liddy said in the article. “They took on their leadership responsibilities beautifully. They lived out the spirit and the culture that we learned about in the volunteer trainings, which was to have a clean heart in communicating and working with people. To not get exasperated with the problems but to concentrate on kindness and the heart of the other. This was so evident among the young organizers.”

Liddy had accommodations with other volunteers at a former Augustinian convent overlooking the Tagus River run by a husband-and-wife team. The convent was built in the 1700s and was dissolved during the extinction of the religious orders in 1834.

In the article, Liddy, reflected on what Pope Francis said of the young on his flight press conference home. “The young people are a surprise. Young people are young, they act youthful, life is like that. But they are seeking to look forward. And they are the future. The idea is to accompany them. The problem is knowing how to accompany them.”

Liddy agrees with Pope Francis that knowing how to accompany them is a challenge, but an exciting one.

“We need to be honest with young people, to show them the truth. And then let them bring their own creativity and dreams into the work and accompany them as they go forward,” said Liddy.

Read the Jersey Catholic article here.