Muslim leaders want to get involved in WYD '08

CWNews:

Islamic leaders in Australia may encourage participation in the 2008 World Youth Day celebration, in exchange for a promise from Catholic leaders that there will be no effort to convert young people of other faiths, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

CNA reports:

Sydney’s Muslim leaders have offered to open their mosques and school halls to Catholic pilgrims for World Youth Day 2008. The announcement was made after WYD organizers met with more than a dozen Islamic religious and community leaders on Monday for a briefing about the international Catholic youth event.

WYD Coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher said the briefing was also a chance to consider ways that the Islamic community might collaborate by offering hospitality, hosting interfaith activities, or volunteering at WYD. The Church has committed that it will not try to convert members of other religious denominations volunteering at WYD, reported The Sydney Morning Herald.

Certainly a good opportunity, under the proper circumstances.

Meanwhile, in other Catholic youth news, Pope Benedict "encourages young people to have nostalgia for the eternal":

In a message to the participants of the International Pilgrimage of Youth, which has arrived in the Marian shrine of Mariazell in Austria, Pope Benedict XVI told the young people that “despite ‘material satisfaction,’ nostalgia for the eternal is very present and that the Church in Europe is alive.”

The Pope invited participants to seek an encounter “with Jesus Christ, in prayer, in the Sacred Liturgy, which you celebrate in visible communion with the Church, as well as at different times during your encounter, so that your friendship with Him can grow.”

“When so many young people come to Mariazell to encounter Christ there in the sacraments, one cannot help but see in that a sign that despite ‘material satisfaction,’ nostalgia for the eternal is very present and the Church in Europe is alive,” the pontiff said in his message which was read by Cardinal Cristoph Schonborn of Vienna.