When John Sondag says World Youth Day is a valuable experience, he would know. He recently returned from his 11th, this time held Aug. 1-6 in Lisbon, Portugal, an event that drew an estimated 1.5 million people from around the world.

“It’s a pilgrimage, and every time something is a little different, and you have to roll with the punches,” said Sondag, director of religious education at St. Helena in Minneapolis for 41 years. But it’s a very positive experience for young people, he said.

“They get a sense of the universal Church that I don’t think you can get any other way,” Sondag said. Even traveling to Rome doesn’t give young people the chance to interact with others their age every day, and with “the colors, the flags and the sounds” of World Youth Day, he said.

And participants are “united with our Holy Father,” Pope Francis, Sondag said, something they will remember “for the rest of their lives.” And “a lot of catechesis” takes place, both formal and informal, “with the adults that are with them,” Sondag said.

The next World Youth Day takes place in Seoul, South Korea, in 2027, the first one held in mainland Asia. Pope Francis also invited young people to visit Rome during the Holy Year 2025 for a youth celebration.

The WYD trip includes sacrifice in “enduring some things for the faith,” Sondag said. Different from giving up candy for Lent, World Youth Day participants sometimes “sleep on the ground, on rocky ground all night, and you’re waiting (often in long lines to venues), and that’s a different kind of a sacrifice for the faith,” he said.

Before arriving in Lisbon, the group Sondag led toured Barcelona, Spain, and visited its famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. From Barcelona, the group traveled to Lourdes, France, and Fátima in Portugal, and visited the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, the reputed burial site of St. James the Great.

Sondag traveled to World Youth Day with a group of 42 including his pastor, Father Marcus Milless, five young people from their parish and other young people from All Saints in Lakeville, St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake, St. Henry in Monticello, Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul, St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, St. Pius V in Cannon Falls and Holy Trinity in South St. Paul.

Three other groups from the archdiocese participated: a group of 16 co-led by Michelle Boris, coordinator of young adult ministries at St. Mary of the Lake in White Bear Lake, and Nick Brady, director of Next Steps at St. Paul in Ham Lake; a group from St. Michael in St. Michael; and a group of Latino pilgrims representing several parishes, Boris said: St. Stephen in Minneapolis, St. Francis de Sales in St. Paul, St. Odilia in Shoreview, Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Minneapolis, Incarnation in Minneapolis and Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul.

This was Boris’ first World Youth Day. But she had previously served abroad with West St. Paul-based NET Ministries. “I’m no stranger to travel for my faith,” she said.

Jacob Mischke, 27, said this year’s World Youth Day was his first. Friends who attended before told him the experience was “phenomenal.” This year he felt “a calling” to go, he said.

Mischke said the trip was a good experience but more challenging than a typical vacation. The amount of walking and waiting in line to enter venues could take time. His roommate tracked their pilgrimage on Saturday and they walked 11 miles in crowds for seven hours and 17 minutes. “And we were carrying between 35 and 65 pounds on us,” he said. Sometimes he carried a backpack on his chest while carrying one on his back and a food bag on his arm. “I think doing it together spurred us on,” Mischke said. “And I think a lot of it was just grace.”

Difficulties arise when accommodating 1.5 million people, Mischke said, but Lisbon “did a phenomenal job hosting the event.”

“We’re blessed … that English is the world’s default language,” Mischke said. “We’re able to converse. I did try to practice my Italian a little bit and I was pretty rusty.”

Mischke said he appreciated experiencing the universality of the Church, “and a Church which is forever young.”

“World Youth Day really encompasses those two elements very well,” he said.

A typical vacation is more enjoyed in the moment, Mischke said, and “you may think about it for a week or two afterward,” before it “dissipates from memory.” “This is one of those trips where maybe it wasn’t as enjoyable in the moment all the time, but it will stick with you for the rest of your life.”

Among the 1.5 million attendees, Mischke ran into a friend he hadn’t seen in some time, and who has since been ordained a priest. They happened to be staying at the same hotel.

Boris can identify with running into people she knew in such a large crowd. For one, during a catechesis session, she saw her parish priest from when she lived in Glasgow, Scotland. At a crowded train station, she ran into a student going to college in Texas whom she knew as a teen at her previous parish job. “God was working his graces to give us these,” she said. “It’s kind of a giant Catholic reunion of people from all over the world,” she said.

One lasting memory for Boris happened as her group left Mass on the last day. They departed after Communion to allow time to get back to their hotel, pack and get to the airport in time to make their flight. They heard the pope’s final blessing as they left.

“We hadn’t seen the pope up close all week,” she said, but as they walked out of the park, they heard the crowd cheering after Mass ended. “And the papal envoy just drove right by us on the street,” Boris said, “and we saw Pope Francis waving to us.”

Her entire group got to see him, Boris said. “And that was … our final moment of World Youth Day, the official event,” she said. “It was just the cherry on top.”

Brady, 30, said his group members were “very well formed, so that was a joy.” Not his first World Youth Day rodeo, he had experienced it in Poland in 2016.

He recalls learning about Pope John Paul II at that youth day, “a modern-day saint (who) was alive during my lifetime.” And he visited the former pope’s childhood home.

This year’s event in Portugal was different in that he was guiding others through the experience, “helping make decisions and trying to provide some level of formation.”

“I really appreciated the evening time … and small group discussion, and just to hear about how God was working in their lives through this experience,” he said. “To help facilitate that was pretty cool.”

His group of 16 ranged in age from their 20s to 30s.

Brady said one of the “keystone events” was the vigil where pilgrims sleep outside the night before Sunday Mass with the pope, which the pope also visited, he said. The walk to the vigil site was about 13 miles, he said, and took six to seven hours in near 100-degree heat, which he said was “kind of a spiritual purification.”

Being in the gathering area that evening, with “powerful music” is “an energy and a moment that you really can’t translate without being there,” Brady said. “To see the young Church … gathered all together in support of their faith, hoping to see the pope and to be with him during this time. It’s special.”

One speaker’s message that resonated with Mischke was from Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, who addressed how today’s culture promotes a message of “being safe, safety first,” Mischke recalled. “Imagine telling David before he went out … to defeat Goliath to … don’t be reckless,” he said. “We’re not called as Christians to operate from this realm of safety, that we only want to be safe and secure. We need to be bold, we need to challenge ourselves, and that sometimes means venturing out into the danger for the sake of the Gospel, which I thought was a pretty strong message.”

A favorite trip memory for Mischke took place around 6 a.m. on the last day. People slept outdoors that last night before Pope Francis celebrated Mass, and he awoke to music played by “a DJ priest.”

“After sleeping on rocks and dirt, and then he started playing these beats, and the sun was rising and it was just an awesome experience,” Mischke said. “I’ve always felt uplifted through that type of music. And so, God (was) affirming me in that.”

Asked how being among hundreds of thousands of young Catholics impacts his faith, Brady said “it gives me hope for the Church.”

“It gives me hope that the Church is listening. It gives me hope that the Church understands young people and that they’re really trying to make an effort to help young people experience God in a way that makes sense to them,” Brady said.

Knowing how difficult it can be to live in this culture as a young person, with “all the different things coming at us,” Brady said, he found it “really powerful to feel heard and encouraged by the presence of so many people who are on fire for the faith and wanted to be, and have this experience.”

John Boyle, 27, youth minister and religion teacher at St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park, experienced his first World Youth Day, traveling with 33 others in his group. He recalled remarks given by Catholic speaker Chris Stefanick, including, “If we want to change the world, we have to pursue sainthood.”

“First and foremost, we have to desire to be saints, and saints must rise up in our times now to preach the Gospel, to live the Gospel,” Boyle said.