Maine youth pilgrims impressed by pope Bishop accompanied group to Germany

BANGOR – Area teenagers and adults returned from World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, physically weary but spiritually strengthened.

They also returned impressed with Pope Benedict XVI, the man who was elected pontiff earlier this year after the death of Pope John Paul II.

“The pope seemed happy to be there with us,” Ben Zmistowski, 19, of Old Town said earlier this week, “and we were glad to be sharing our faith with him. … What has stuck with me the most is what he said about our need to come together to share our faith with each other, and not push away people of other faiths, but to be accepting of them.”

The University of Maine sophomore added that Pope Benedict said many of the same things his predecessor did.

“He just had a different way of expressing them,” he said.

Zmistowski was one 43 young people from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland who, along with 29 adults, journeyed to Cologne last month.

The Rev. Robert Vaillancourt, pastor of St. Matthew’s in Hampden and St. Gabriel’s in Winterport, served as the group’s spiritual leader, as he has for previous World Youth Days.

Bishop Richard Malone also traveled with the group and held a special Mass on Aug. 20 as the group began the five-mile walk to the former strip mine where the pope held an overnight vigil and Mass the next morning.

“Saturday, as we traded the comfort of an excellent German hotel for the tarp draped, over heated, massively crowded, chaos of the field, I thought my greatest challenge would be the physical aspects of spending a day and a half outdoors sitting on the ground,” wrote Lynn Ryan, 49, of Hampden in an e-mail.

She attended the event with her 17-year-old daughter, Molly Ryan.

Although they live in Hampden, the Ryans attend St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Bangor, where Lynn Ryan works as youth ministry coordinator.

She is also the diocesan resource coordinator for youth ministry for the region that comprises Washington, Hancock, Penobscot and Piscataquis counties and a portion of Waldo County.

“Usually a crowd of young people energizes me for I get revved up from their energy,” Lynn Ryan wrote in her e-mail, “but I knew the pace we had been keeping all week had taxed me and more than 27 hours sitting on the ground would be challenging. During the daylight all was easy – so much to see, hear and pray, but night was different. … The temperature dipped so low that you could see your breath.”

The Maine pilgrims were not prepared for such a drop in temperature or the field mice that ran across their sleeping bags as they attempted to rest, she said. They also consolidated their makeshift campsite twice to make room for pilgrims from the Dominican Republic and France.

“I did get closer to Christ during this pilgrimage,” Lynn Ryan said, “but not that night. … We discovered the humor in sleeping next to people, who by day spoke many foreign languages, but by night were all snoring in the same language – loud!”

As hard as the night had been, however, trying to get off the site along with more than 1 million other people proved to be more difficult. Lynn Ryan said that at one point, she lost sight of her daughter in the crowd. Eventually, the two reunited and agreed to offer their hardship up to Christ.

Though physically exhausting, the trip strengthened the faith of both mother and daughter.

“Now the words ‘If Christ leads you to it, he will lead you through it,’ are alive,” Ryan said. “To be with so many people, all praising God with one voice, yet in so many different languages fills me with hope.”