The biggest sources of pilgrims so far: USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Philippines…

1000+ groups register for World Youth Day 2008 in first 50 days

AUSTRAILIA, WYD08. International interest in World Youth Day 2008 (WYD08) in Sydney looks very promising with more than 1000 pilgrim groups registering in the first 50 days.

Organisers say they are delighted with the response, which indicates more than 65,000 pilgrims are already planning to attend the event from 15-20 July next year. "Eventually, we're expecting around 200,000 people to formally register and up to 500,000 to attend at least one event during the week," said WYD08 Chief Operating Officer Danny Casey. "So it's very encouraging to see more than 1000 groups representing 65,000 pilgrims already registering to attend at this early stage."

Group registrations opened on 2 March - 500 days before the start of World Youth Day 2008 - to give WYD08 organisers a guide to expected demand for accommodation, catering and transport. "Individual registrations will open in July; this is when pilgrims will have to provide individual details and can start making payments for their packages," Mr Casey said.

Key indicators to emerge in the first seven weeks of group registrations include:

• The United States is the biggest source of groups and pilgrims at this stage (375 and more than 23,000 respectively)
• Australia is next with 146 groups, representing 15,484 pilgrims
• The next biggest source countries are Canada (42 groups), Germany (34) and the Philippines (25) - all previous WYD host nations
• Almost 50,000 pilgrims (77%) have nominated English as their preferred language, with 6,506 nominating Spanish (10%) and 2601 preferring German (4%)

World Youth Day is the largest youth event in the world and will attract an anticipated 500,000 pilgrims to Sydney for six days of religious and cultural activities. It is a Catholic event, open to people of all faiths. One of the groups from Germany is that of the Schoenstatt Youth!

WYD08 will also mark the first visit by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Australia.

More: wyd2008.org