This morning started off at the Formation House in Lacrosse, with Lauds, a Holy Hour, and Breakfast. In 8 minutes, we will be departing for the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe!

Thank you for following the seminarian blog while we were on our pilgrimage at World Youth day. Here are a few pictures from our pilgrimage:

The Lord desired that the last leg of our pilgrimage be a time to grow in holiness and patience. We had thought that our trip to Fatima, Portugal was going to be around a 4 hour bus trip, but instead it ended up being a 10 hour bus trip. This left little time for us actually at Fatima before we needed to head to Lisbon, Portugal for a short night stay in a hostel. Since we arrived so late, we only had 2 ½ hours in Fatima which was barely enough time to pray at the Marian apparition site, have Mass, and do some quick shopping. Many of us were actually running around the massive site trying to see a few things before we needed to be on the bus. Despite the stay being short in the small Portuguese town of Fatima, we all absolutely loved being there at this beautiful and peaceful place. One of the most popular and powerful experiences for the group while we were there was walking on our knees along a long path around the Marian apparition site.

Our trip to Lisbon after Fatima ended up taking more time than expected also, and since we needed to be at the airport early the next morning to head back home, it was decided that we would skip the hostel (after the bus got stuck trying to get to it down some narrow Portuguese streets) and just grab a late dinner and spend the night in the airport. Since we were already used to sleeping on a gym floor, sleeping on an airport floor didn’t really faze us and almost seemed normal. To add to the experience, a throat illness began spreading amongst the group causing many to break out in coughs and sore throats.

In the end, though, after 20+ hours and three flights (all delayed) we all made it back safely to the States (with only one baggage lost in travel). We are exhausted, but we all come back united more deeply as a family and with many experiences that we will all reflect on for the rest of our lives. It was a great privilege to spend this time together, especially us seminarians who are spread across various seminaries, and to spend it seeing the Universal Church in all her glory and beauty.

We will try to get some pictures posted by the end of the day, and be on the look out for a Leaven article sometime in the next few weeks with articles and pictures from our pilgrimage.

God bless all of you!

The last three days were a whirlwind, and unfortunately we were not able to post. On Friday we all went to a catechesis session led by the popular Archishop Dolan of New York. He gave the best catechesis of the week and was realy able to meet us where we were at and draw us closer to Christ from there. He also had some very memorable jokes which had all of us, including our Archbishop, laughing and enjoying the morning. That evening, many of us headed off to get a spot to watch the Stations of the Cross presided over by the Holy Father. Many of us ended up not actually seeing the Stations firsthand but instead watched it on a big screen just outside the venue. Some did actually brave the crowd and go in and one of our seminarians even managed to work his way on stage with all the bishops and the Holy Father. The stations themselves were very well done and were accompanied with music that really lifted up the soul into the mystery of Christ's suffering.

Saturday was a very eventful and memorable day for us. The seminarians started the day off early at 6 am to head down to the Cathedral of Madrid for a seminarian Mass with the Holy Father. As we traveled there, we were amazed to see partiers finishing up their night/morning. 5 of our crew of 22 seminarians got into the Cathedral while the rest watched from a piazza out in front of the Cathedral. The Mass was very beautiful and very prayerful. We are not sure what he said but it sounded good and we all look forward to getting back and reading his homily. The most exciting part was at the end of the Mass where he declared a new Doctor of the Church, which has only happened 34 times now in the history of the Church. We all look forward to getting to know this new Doctor more.

That evening we made the famous pilgrimage journey to the final Mass site. The trains to it were so packed that we didn't need to hold onto anything because there was no way we could fall. The day was very hot too and we were all praying for some clouds or even rain but we in no way expected what would come later that evening. Our section ended up being full and so we ended up camping out in a section which seemed like it was a mile away from the main stage. All was going realively well in the massive crowd as the Holy Father came and started a prayer vigil, when off in the distance a storm cloud began brewing amd headed towards us. We thought it might pass us but then all of a sudden tremendous winds ripped through the crowd of over a million people followed by rain. It also got quite cold. Everything stopped and people began fleeing as the "hurricane" rolled through, but we all managed to survive unscathed. After that rain stopped, the prayer vigil continued and then finished. It is an unbelievable sight to see one million people kneeling in adoration with the Pope and hundreds of bishops.

We all slept relatively well that night and got to wake up to see the damage from the storm. Then we had a beautiful Mass with the Holy Father and then made the long journey home. It was truly a wonderful and very eventful few days with the Pope.

We are now packing up our gym floor and heading off to Fatima, and then tomorrow we will fly back to the States. Pray we have a safe journey to Portugal and then back home.

We started off the day like normal at the Love and Life center with catechesis done today by a bisgop from Canada. Many in our group fell asleep out of exhaustion, but the talk itself was pretty good. Jason Everett and his wife spoke before him and that was very well received.

After catechesis, the KCK group split up with most of the group heading towards the opening ceremony site. We got there around 2:30 and the pope wasn't scheduled to arrive until 8, and so we waited in the massive crowds and worked our way as close to the stage as we could. We were amazingly very successful, but it wasn't easy. We ended up being just to the right of the monument in front of the stage. We waved the Kansas flag proudly in the sea of flags from all around the world. The day was amazingly hot too, but thankfully they handed out a lot of water.

There was great joy when the Holy Father finally arrived, and I'm not sure what exactly he said in his Spanish homily but it sounded good and was undoubtedly probably very profound. The event ended up being pretty short itself and afterwards we hiked a very long distance back to the ranch for food and rest.

It was another successful day in Spain.

This year for WYD each group chooses where they want to do their morning catechesis. Our KCK group chose to go to the Love and Life Arena sponsered by the sisters of life and knights of columbus. Cardinal Pell of Sydney, Australia gave the catechesis session, which went over well. He then celebrated Mass and three of our guys had the privilege of serving it. The afternoon was free and so everyone went off and did their own things in the city. There was apparently some anti_Catholic protests downtown causing a Metro station to be closed but we didn't encounter any problems.

Today we are at the same Catechesis site and we will try to make it to the papal welcome this evening. We will post pictures whenever we can post somewhere besides Fr. Mitchel's phone.