Youth 2000 is an international
Catholic
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 ...
movement for young people, generally between the ages of 16 and 35. Youth 2000's activities generally include the running of both community prayer groups and weekend retreats for young people. At their retreats, which are between two and five days long, teens and adults alike share their love for Jesus through the Eucharist, adoration, and praise and worship. It has been active since 1990 in the UK and in Ireland in 1993. The first weekly prayer group was held at the Carmelite Priory in Kensington.
[Youth 2000 - About.](_blank)
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Beginnings
Youth2000 was started in response to 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 ...
's invitation to the youth to take an active part in the Decade of Evangelization leading up to the Great Jubilee Year 2000. In his address at World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostella in Spain in 1989, Pope John Paul II asked young people to evangelize each other by coming together, learning about and experiencing the love of God, saying "It is up to you young people that the task first falls of bearing witness to the faith and bringing into the Third Millennium the Gospel of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life" Ernest Williams, a twenty-six-year old IT specialist from England, was moved by the challenge and came up with the idea of Youth 2000, formally founding the organization in Medjugorje
Medjugorje ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Međugorje, Међугорје, ) is a town located in southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, about southwest of Mostar and east of the border with Croatia. The town is part of the Čitluk municipality ...
in 1990.
Purpose
Whilst specific details vary from country to country, the main focuses of Youth 2000 tend to be as follows :
* Increasing the awareness and love of Jesus
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 ...
in the Eucharist
The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...
, through 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 elementar ...
and Eucharistic Adoration.
* Promoting devotion to Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
as a means of coming closer to Christ, through saying the Rosary
The Rosary (; la, , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), also known as the Dominican Rosary, or simply the Rosary, refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or b ...
.
* Encouraging young people to read the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, get to know Jesus through Scripture and also to promote understanding of and fidelity to official Church teaching.
* Bringing about Christian conversion.
The Structure of a Youth 2000 Retreat
Youth 2000's weekend retreats play a large role in their activities. The structure of retreats vary, summer retreats tend to be longer than autumn retreats. As a rule of thumb, retreats involve workshops, live music, adoration and mass.
In the UK the main event is the annual Youth 2000 Prayer Festival which takes place at the Walsingham Catholic Shrine in Norfolk over 5 days covering the August Bank Holiday weekend.
Controversies
In 2006, members of a small, militant group which had attached itself to a peaceful "Youth 2000" Retreat organised with Father Kevin Knox-Lecky, the Catholic Priest of St Mary's church, Glastonbury
Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury ...
were cautioned by police for throwing salt and shouting at local pagans Pagans may refer to:
* Paganism, a group of pre-Christian religions practiced in the Roman Empire
* Modern Paganism, a group of contemporary religious practices
* Order of the Vine, a druidic faction in the ''Thief'' video game series
* Pagan's ...
. The police warned two women and arrested (and later released) one youth.
Father Kevin Knox-Lecky said that the poor behaviour witnessed by the Pagan Community had come from a small, militant "fringe group" that "attached" itself to the Youth 2000 retreat in Glastonbury. He said this militant fringe group were “unChristian and unrepresentative” of Youth 2000.
Charlie Connor, the managing director of Youth 2000, said: "For the avoidance of doubt, Youth 2000 does not condone or encourage this kind of behaviour from anyone. We fully agree that differences on matters of faith cannot and should not be resolved by any kind of harassment.”
But he added: “Youth 2000 would also like to place on the record that many young people at the retreat were harassed, sworn at and even cursed by people. One incident included the taking of photographs of young people, including children, and numbers plates by people present in the town."
References
External links
Youth 2000 UK site
Youth 2000 Ireland site
Youth 2000 America site
Youth 2000 French site
Youth 2000 German Site
{{Catholic Youth Ministry
Catholic youth organizations
Christian organizations established in 1990