USCCB - (Office of Media Relations) - �Virtual Experience' Of World Youth Day To Be Offered

'Virtual Experience' Of World Youth Day To Be Offered

WASHINGTON (July 11, 2002) -- Beginning Monday, July 22 anyone with access to a computer can log on to www.wydusa.org and experience what's happening at World Youth Day in Toronto through the eyes of some U.S. young adults who will participate in the worldwide gathering.

Throughout the six-day event the U.S. Bishops' World Youth Day staff will post a daily on-line journal, including photos, compiled from the reports of six young "journalists" who have agreed to share their impressions and stories. At the end of each day the journal text and photos will be edited and transmitted to Washington where, on the following morning, this material will appear on the website, www.wydusa.org.

The ability to access the U.S./ WYD on-line journal has been a standard feature of the previous two meetings in Paris and Rome. Parents, friends, family members, and the many young people who can't travel to World Youth Day have consistently expressed thanks to WYD organizers for offering them the chance to follow the activities on a daily basis. Parents, particularly, have commented how reading the on-line journal has helped them to stay in touch with their children at World Youth Day and to appreciate what the experience means for them.

The young people selected to write for the journal represent a cross-section of the total attendees at WYD. Among them are Melanie Haas, a 21-year-old senior at Texas A&M
University; Nick Huck, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Richmond; Dianne Duemig, an almost 16-year-old at Wellington High School, near Lake Worth, FL, and Antonio Chevarria, age 18, of Gallup, New Mexico.

Personal introductions, written by each of the journalists, can be found on the website www.wydusa.org.