Vatican City, Aug 11, 2011 / 13:26 pm
Five hundred young people are traveling over 7,000 miles in seven days just to see Pope Benedict XVI in Madrid next week – and they all say it’s worth it.
“It’s important to be there because there are not many Catholics in Taiwan and so we thought it would be good for our young people to gain a broader vision of the whole Catholic Church,” group leader Angela Ng told CNA.
The group of pilgrims hails from the island of Taiwan--the only part of China that didn’t fall under communist rule following the Chinese civil war of 1946-50. It has a population of 23 million, of which only two percent are Catholic.
CNA met up with a group of 30 young Taiwanese pilgrims in St. Peter’s Basilica, where they had just attended Mass. Italy, however, is just the latest stop for the group on a journey that has taken them from Taiwan to Hong Kong to Germany to Rome and finally to Madrid.