A Great Symbol of Our Faith 

Best known now as the World Youth Day Cross, it also goes by the names the "Holy Year Cross", the "Jubilee Cross", the "Pilgrim Cross" and the "Youth Cross". It had its beginning in 1984, when celebrating the Holy Year of Redemption, Pope John Paul II desired that there should be a cross - the great symbol of our faith - near the main altar in Saint Peter's where it could be seen by everyone.

At the conclusion of the Jubilee Year Pope John Paul II closed the Holy Door, and the Cross, 3.8m high and 1.75m wide, that had made its home inside, was taken outside and entrusted to a group of young people to be carried out into the world. At that time more than 300,000 young people from all over the world had taken up the Pope's invitation to come to Rome for the Palm Sunday International Jubilee of Youth.

Since this time the WYD Cross has made its way around the world, throughout Europe, behind the Iron Curtain, and to parts of the Americas, Asia, Africa and briefly to Australia, being present at each international celebration of World Youth Day along the way. In 1994 the Cross began in earnest what has since become a tradition: its year long journey around the dioceses of the host nation of each international World Youth Day, as a means of prayerful preparation for the big event.

Heralding these international celebrations of young people, the Cross is now best known as "the World Youth Day Cross". The media have often called the Cross the "Olympic Torch" of the World Youth Day. It is a useful comparison. In each country that the Cross visits, it travels from cities to towns, parishes to prayer groups. Young people take charge of it, spend time in prayer with it, and encourage their peers to do the same.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II gave young people a second symbol of faith to be carried in the world, accompanying the WYD Cross - the Icon of Our Lady, 'Salus Populi Romani', a contemporary copy of a sacred and ancient icon housed in the first and greatest basilica to Mary the Mother of God in the West, St Mary Major.

These symbols are presented most powerfully to the world by young people who carry them not only for a few moments or hours, but in the example of their daily Christian lives.

For more information check out: http://www.wyd2008.org/index.php/en/journey_of_the_wyd_cross_icon/history link to Sydney