Madrid, Spain, May 12, 2005 / 22:00 pm
In an interview with the Spanish daily “La Razon,” the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, said that with the election of Benedict XVI, the original plans for the next World Youth Day were kept in place, as more than one million young people are expected for the event.
“We have always expected around 800,000. But I think that now, since we will have two Popes—one in heaven and another on earth—for sure one million young people will come,” the cardinal said.
“John Paul II was the one who invited young people to World Youth Day. More than four million people came to Rome for his funeral, many of them young people. And at the ‘Habemus Papam,’ 80% were young people. I am convinced that we can expect one million young people. Cardinal Rouco has told me that many will come from Spain, because Spain is not far from Cologne,” he said.
The cardinal revealed that he was the first of the cardinals to promise fidelity to the Pope. “I wanted to tell him: ‘Holy Father, welcome to Cologne,’ but I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t say anything. Then the Holy Father said to me, ‘I am coming to Cologne and I am happy to go to Cologne.’ I didn’t need to invite him. He invited himself. And to me that is the way it should be because it is his World Youth Day, not mine.”