{"id":6307,"date":"2023-08-06T20:15:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T15:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=6307"},"modified":"2023-08-06T20:15:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T15:15:48","slug":"s-korea-to-hold-next-catholic-youth-festival-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/news\/s-korea-to-hold-next-catholic-youth-festival-pope\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Korea to hold next Catholic youth festival: pope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>South Korea will host the next World Youth Day, a major Catholic youth festival, in 2027, Pope Francis said on Sunday at the close of this year&#8217;s event in Lisbon.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The next World Youth Day will be in Asia. It will be in South Korea in Seoul,&#8221; the pontiff told the faithful assembled to celebrate a mass at a park on the eastern outskirts of the Portuguese capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;And so in 2027, from the western border of Europe it will move to the Far East, and this is a beautiful sign of the universality of the Church.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The crowd of around 1.5 million flag-waving young pilgrims from around the world cheered at the announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The festival has only been held in Asia once &#8212; in the Filippino capital Manila in 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>World Youth Day, which is in fact a week-long Catholic jamboree, features a wide range of events, including concerts and prayer sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We believe visitors to Korea will be impressed by our country&#8217;s remarkable efficiency,&#8221; the Archbishop of Seoul, Peter Soon-taek Chung, told a news conference in Lisbon after the pope&#8217;s announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The World Youth Day is not just a Catholic event. It is a global celebration and a platform for inter-religious encounters,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year&#8217;s festival, initially scheduled for August 2022 but postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, was the fourth for Francis after Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Krakow in 2016 and Panama in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Created in 1986 by John Paul II, it is an opportunity for the Vatican to galvanise young Catholics at a time when secularism and priest paedophilia scandals are causing some to abandon the faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pope Francis visited South Korea in 2014, in what was the first trip to Asia by a pontiff in 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country is one of Roman Catholicism&#8217;s few strongholds in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 11 percent of South Korea&#8217;s population of around 52 million people are Catholic, a number that has increased in recent decades.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea will host the next World Youth Day, a major Catholic youth festival, in 2027, Pope Francis said on Sunday at the close of this year&#8217;s event in Lisbon. &#8220;The next World Youth Day will be in Asia. It will be in South Korea in Seoul,&#8221; the pontiff told the faithful assembled to celebrate [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":6308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,396,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-latest","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}