ACBC-ACU Office for Pastoral Research
A partnership between the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Australian Catholic University
Pilgrims' Progress 2008
the research project on
WORLD YOUTH DAY, SYDNEY 2008
July 24, 2008: Stage II of the research project has just been completed: the week of events leading up to the climactic Papal Mass on the final Sunday of the World Youth Day celebrations. The team, expanded to twelve members for this week by the inclusion of some international and local collaborators, travelled to Sydney and attended all of the WYD events with their eyes and ears open. It turned out to be quite difficult to conduct interviews at any real depth with pilgrims during the event, but the team gathered a mass of data from observation and informal conversations. They are at present collating this material. And to conclude this phase, they will be present in the coming weeks at some debriefing sessions for returned groups, and will conduct interviews with selected pilgrims, so as to check observations against pilgrims' accounts of their own experience.
July 23, 2008: Summary of findings from the pre-WYD survey of 12,000 pilgrims.
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