After WYD: ‘We have our faith inside’

Everywhere she went in Toronto, Victoria Perez Rubio, 25, kept running into people she met at World Youth Day in Paris two years ago.

A native of Cadiz, Spain, she has spent the past few months visiting friends in Bar Harbor. She will head home soon and look for work as a translator. Perez Rubio speaks six languages: Spanish, French, English, Chinese, Italian and Basque.

“I think that this pope is so awesome, but we are not going to have him with us for a long time,” she said, “so I think that, for me, this was an opportunity to come see him.”

She noted that Catholicism in the United States is distinctive from Catholicism in Spain, where nearly all identify themselves as Catholic even if they do not attend Mass frequently.

“There it is like one big family, but there I cannot say I am Catholic or I will be attacked,” she said. “In the U.S., people respect you. In Spain people are fed up with the church after their experiences with traditional Catholicism.”

Perez Rubio said that when she returns home, she will try to attend Mass every day, no matter how tired she is or how late she stays out the night before. “We try to be Christians,” she said. “We have our faith inside, but we don’t realize how much worth it is. What [the pope] shows us being here at 82 is that it’s really worth it.”

Damian LaBree is a veteran of World Youth Day. He has attended four all over the place – Denver, Paris, Rome and now Toronto – in the past 10 years. A 26-year-old graduate student working toward his master of business administration at the University of Maine, LaBree lives in Old Town and worships at Holy Family Parish. His family owns LaBree’s Bakery.

“I’ve been amazed at how friendly and welcoming people in the city are,” he said. “They seem to really enjoy having us here.”

LaBree said that although news reports have focused on the 82-year-old pontiff’s failing health, John Paul looks better now than he did in Rome two years ago. He looked tired then, LaBree said.

“I think what you take back is the challenge that he gave us here to live the Beatitudes. He was giving us the message of peace and love to take back to apply to our lives and share that with others around us. In essence that’s what I try to bring back – to kind of evangelize and show people the love of Jesus Christ.”

Most teen-agers attending World Youth Day 2002 were 7 years old when they first received the sacrament of Communion. Gabrielle Schrage, 17, of Hampden is the exception. Known to everybody in the Maine group as Gabby, she took her first Communion at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Hampden just a few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday. While she was baptized a Catholic as an infant, her family attended a United Methodist church.

She joined the St. Matthew’s youth group after a friend invited her.

“I really don’t know what brought me back to the church,” she said. “Part of it may have been a calling.

“A couple of years ago, I didn’t believe in God. I really didn’t talk to him and really didn’t focus on it. I felt really far from him. Then, suddenly, I came back to him.” Her friend helped bring her back.

Jason Doucette is returning home to Hampden a hero.

One of six young Catholics to journey to World Youth Day from St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Hampden, the 19-year-old Hampden Academy graduate knew it was important that they stay together and get to see Pope John Paul II.

That proved to be nearly impossible as hundreds of thousands of people crushed into Exhibition Place to see the pope Thursday afternoon. Two girls in the group got separated from the others.

“I was armed with just a walkie-talkie and the will to call out for people and I pulled ’em in. At one point, we had two people left to find and I just didn’t give up. I kept calling out to them. Plus, they had our food.”

He shouted out at every Maine group, easily identifiable in the blue T-shirts. When he did not return to their spot after an hour and a half, chaperones Kelly Maltz and Kim Achorn began praying they’d be reunited before the pope arrived.

“We were really just all praying that we would all be together,” Maltz said. “We prayed and prayed and Jason suddenly hollered over the walkie-talkie, ‘Here they are.’ The two girls he’d found were on the verge of tears.”

Doucette was one of a handful of young men on the trip contemplating the priesthood.

“I can’t really see myself doing anything else,” he said on the pilgrimage walk Saturday. “I haven’t really made up my mind. I like working with people and I’d like do some kind of work within my faith. I really love the Catholic faith and I love God and stuff. I thought, what better way than to worship God and work for him.”