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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Palau who wrote (697488)	8/20/2005 8:02:33 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Young Pilgrims By IAN FISHER COLOGNE, Germany — There are piercings, crazy hats, bare midriffs and beer, which on the surface makes the 20th World Youth Day look in some ways like any other place where several hundred thousand young people might gather. But the churches here are also full. The pilgrim from Montana may have green hair, but he has also scrawled a letter on the knuckle of each finger: "BXVI," as in Pope Benedict XVI, who at 78 is making his international debut at this festival of Catholic youth. The new pope was treated to a raucous welcome when he arrived on Thursday. But to many participants, Benedict, a shy former theology professor picked only in April, seems too new and unknown a leader to receive the kind of intense adulation showered on his predecessor, John Paul II. "I don't know him," said Josefine Geiger, 15, from Germany. "If you ask me in two years, maybe I can say." The pope is only one reason that young people came here, and may not be the most important. "I want to meet young people from all over the world," Ms. Geiger said. "The feeling here is so great." Demographers might say that the Roman Catholic Church is near death in Europe, but the young people seem aimed at proving the reports exaggerated. They sing hymns, bang on drums, wave flags from most of the nearly 200 countries they have come from - the diversity, they say, showing Catholicism's universal appeal. There is some irritation that World Youth Day, in the description of one young Italian pilgrim, has become "much more commercial," a place for young Catholics to have a big party. But others say that faith and fun do not cancel each other. "We pray and we enjoy," said Maher Oudwan, 25, from Lebanon. "We are not sad, going into our churches to pray. Jesus was joy, and you have to share it with people."