Half a million young Catholics invade Rome, awaiting Pope Leo at Holy Year youth festival
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Misting trucks and water cannons spritzed the young people to try to keep them cool as temperatures neared 30 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fahrenheit) with hours to go before Leo arrived for the vigil. But the mood was festive, with young people dancing to a line-up of a dozen different bands or lying on their tarpaulins where they had set up camp for the night.
'It is something spiritual, that you can experience only every 25 years,' said Francisco Michel, a pilgrim from Mexico. 'As a young person, having the chance to live this meting with the pope I feel it is a spiritual growth.'
For the past week, these bands of young Catholics from around the world have poured into Rome for their special Jubilee celebration, in this Holy Year in which 32 million people are expected to descend on the Vatican to take part in a centuries-old pilgrimage to the seat of Catholicism.
The young people have been traipsing down cobblestone streets in colour-coordinated T-shirts, praying the Rosary and singing hymns with guitars, bongo drums and tambourines shimmying alongside.
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Using their flags as tarpaulins to shield them from the sun, they have taken over entire piazzas for Christian rock concerts and inspirational talks, and stood for hours at the Circus Maximus to confess their sins to 1,000 priests offering the sacrament in a dozen different languages.
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