PORTLAND – Most of the 51 Catholic teenagers and their chaperones who left last week for World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia, are making their very first pilgrimages.

For Jeanne Bigelow, a veteran of five previous world gatherings of Catholic youth, the trip will be her last as diocesan director of youth ministry. Bigelow, 66, of Naples will retire on Aug. 1 from the job she has held since 1991.

“I’m looking forward to this particular trip,” she said last week. “This will be part of my discernment as to what God has in store for me next. I know that being with all these young people, I will get filled with hope and enthusiasm.”

The Maine group will make up a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that converged on the city over the weekend for World Youth Day to be held Tuesday through Sunday. The gathering of Catholic youth, convened every three years, is the biggest event held in Australia since the 2000 Olympics.

More than 200,000 Catholics from around the world are expected to attend the six-day event that will culminate with an outdoor Mass on Sunday celebrated by the pope.

About half of the Maine group left Thursday, and the rest left Portland on Saturday morning by bus for JFK International Airport. From New York City, the pilgrims were scheduled to fly to Frankfurt, Germany, and then to Singapore before arriving in Sydney. It was expected to take at least 24 hours to make the trip, Bigelow said.

The journey cost each pilgrim about $3,500, she said, including “sparse” accommodations at the YMCA in downtown Sydney.

Bigelow said it would be the first time she has attended WYD in the Southern Hemisphere. Other years, she has been concerned about pilgrims getting dehydrated or suffering from heatstroke north of the equator. But temperatures in Sydney are expected to be in the 50s and 60s and could dip into the 40s at night, she said.

Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled to arrive Sunday and expected to rest for a few days before leading a series of prayer gatherings and meetings on Thursday. He is scheduled to take a boat trip on Sydney Harbor, followed by a welcome ceremony and papal motorcade through downtown.

Bishop Richard J. Malone, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, is scheduled to arrive a day or two behind young members of his flock because of his busy schedule at home. He will lead English-speaking youths in prayer and reflection, then celebrate Mass three days this week. Malone and many other bishops from around the world will focus their homilies on the Holy Spirit after daily catechesis.

The bishop is scheduled to celebrate Mass with just the Maine pilgrims on Saturday.

The group from Maine also hopes to connect with Monsignor Marc B. Caron. He has served as the co-chancellor for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland along with Sister Rita Mae Bissonnette for the past 11 years.

Caron, 45, has been working in Sydney since mid-May. His job has been to help schedule confessions by day, time, place and language for the throngs of pilgrims expected. He said that before he left Maine his fluency in French clinched the assignment. One of his tasks will be to verify liturgical translations that are in French.

French is one of the four official languages of WYD. The others are English, Italian and Spanish.

The languages may be different, Bigelow said, but the spiritual experience of WYD is communal.

“Being with a young adult crowd filled with enthusiasm about the Catholic faith is a wonderful experience for them and for me,” she said.

It’s part of what has helped Bigelow see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty during the last decade that has included the church’s sexual abuse scandal, tight budgets and a shortage of priests.

Over the years, Bigelow estimated, she has worked with 17,000 teenage Catholics who now are young adults.

Bigelow said that after she retires, she’ll take a six-month sabbatical and listen for what God is calling her to do next.

For information on Maine Catholics’ experiences at World Youth Day, visit www.portland

diocese.net.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

990-8207