By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper
St. Thomas Aquinas High School pilgrims pray with their parents for a safe trip before going through security at Miami International Airport.
Every World Youth Day pilgrim and leader received a journal in which to chronicle their experience.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski with his "travel hat" poses with Father Silverio Rueda, a Colombian priest traveling with the St. Ann Mission group.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski chats with pilgrims from St. Ann Mission before boarding a plane to Poland.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski chats with pilgrims from St. Ann Mission before boarding a plane to Poland.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski chats with pilgrims from Little Flower Parish in Coral Gables before boarding a plane to Poland.
The group from Little Flower Parish in Coral Gables poses for a photo before heading through airport security. The only man in the group is Jorge Santibanez, religious education director at the church, who is traveling with his wife, Angelica, far right.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski takes a picture with the pilgrim group from St. Ann Mission in Homestead.
It's Poland or bust for Pablo Rodriguez, 28, leader of the St. Ann Mission group, who's all ready to try and get some sleep on the overnight flight.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski blesses the St. Ann Mission pilgrims before their departure.
Miami International Airport Director Emilio Gonzalez, left, stopped by to greet Archbishop Thomas Wenski before his flight. At right is Stephen Colella, director of the archdiocesan secretariat for evangelization, who is traveling to his sixth World Youth Day.
We didn't put it there: a little statue of Mary surrounded by rosaries sits just above the entrance to one of the three pilgrim's buses.
Bumper to bumper traffic began just outside the Vienna airport and continued until nearly the Polish border.
The view from our bus for most of the day: the countryside of the Czech Republic.
Marian statue on the grounds of the cemetery in the church of St. George, Cieszyn.
Pilgrims stand at sunset outside the church of St. George in Cieszyn, where they celebrated Mass their first night.
Images of Divine Mercy and St. John Paul II adorn the chapel of St. George Church in Cieszyn.
The confessional just outside the chapel of St. George Church in Cieszyn.
Miami pilgrims celebrate Mass inside the chapel of St. George Church in Cieszyn.
Students and an adult chaperone from Little Flower Church in Coral Gables practice singing "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" before Mass.
Father Bryan Garcia, parochial vicar at St. Andrew in Coral Springs, and Father Silverio Ruida, who is accompanying the St. Ann Mission group, celebrate Mass in the chapel of St. George Church in Cieszyn.
The sanctuary of the chapel of St. George Church is adorned with images of Divine Mercy and St. John Paul II. From left are Father Silverio Rueda, accompanying the St. Ann Mission group, and Father Bryan Garcia, parochial vicar of St. Andrew Church in Coral Springs.
Father Bryan Garcia preaches the homily at the pilgrim's first Mass in Cieszyn, Poland.
Father Martin Wrobel, parochial vicar at the church of St. George, in Cieszyn, snaps a cell phone photo of Miami's pilgrims celebrating Mass in the chapel.
One of the Polish tour guides, Szymon Kieczka, prays during the Mass. He learned Spanish when he spent time working as a missionary with the Salesians in Peru.
Members of the group from Little Flower Church in Coral Gables pray during the first day's Mass in Cieszyn.
Father Martin Wrobel, rear, and his pastor, Father Stefan Sputek, welcome Miami pilgrims to their 14th century church, St. George in Cieszyn.
"Family picture" of the Miami pilgrims and the Polish priests outside St. George Church in Cieszyn.
Photography: ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FC
Cieszyn, Poland | After a long day of traveling — far longer for some than for others — we’re here!
By sunset Saturday, all but 51 of the archdiocesan pilgrims to World Youth Day had arrived at our first stop, the medieval city of Cieszyn. The other 51 also arrived, but much later.
And if there’s one thing to be said for nine hours on a plane, seven hours on a bus and assorted hours at airports: It certainly drove home the point about being pilgrims.
Our trip started Friday afternoon, when all the groups gathered at Miami International Airport. Archbishop Thomas Wenski stopped by before his own departure for Poland to chat with some of the travelers and give them a blessing.
Day one ended, for two-thirds of the group, Saturday evening, with a Mass in the chapel of St. George Church in Cieszyn. Built in the 14th century, it is the oldest Catholic church in town, according to its parochial vicar, Father Martin Wrobel, who welcomed us along with the pastor, Father Stefan Sputek.
They patiently waited for us to arrive, since the first two busloads of pilgrims left at different times from Vienna’s airport. The first group, consisting of teens and their chaperones from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale and Little Flower Church in Coral Gables, left around 11 a.m., arriving at the hotel here around 5:30 p.m.
The second group, consisting of young adults from St. Ann Mission in Homestead, St. Andrew in Coral Springs and St. Mary Cathedral in Miami, was supposed to wait at the airport for the third group to arrive. That group consisted of young adults from Encuentros Juveniles and the Basilica of St. Mary, Star of the Sea, as well as teens and chaperones from Blessed Sacrament and St. Matthew Church in Broward and St. Philip Neri in Miami-Dade.
Unfortunately, a missed flight turned into a true test of pilgrim patience. I’ll let Rosemarie Banich, director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry who was traveling with that group, tell you the rest of the story:
“I said it before, nothing will stop us!” she wrote on her Facebook page. “We missed our connection in Düsseldorf but after 3 hours at the ticket counter our 51 travelers were placed on 5 different flights and we are slowly making our way to our destination. Everyone has a great attitude and I haven’t heard a single complaint.”
They finally arrived in separate batches just before midnight. So we celebrated the first day’s Mass without them while praying for their safe arrival.
The road here certainly put the rest of us in a pilgrim frame of mind: bumper to bumper traffic from just outside the Vienna airport until nearly the border between Poland and the Czech Republic.
In fact, we spent most of our seven hours on the road in the Czech Republic, amid rolling fields of green and gold dotted by clustered villages of brick and stone; and in the hills above many of them, the towers of a castle or spires of a church.
For lunch, we pulled into a roadside rest stop that looked and tasted a lot like home: KFC, Subway, McDonald’s and pizza were all on the menu.
Still, it was a very long day, punctuated near the end by familiar shouts of “Are we there yet?”
So it was nice to arrive and go straight to the magnificent church of St. George — whose visage certainly conveyed its history. Father Bryan Garcia, parochial vicar of St. Andrew in Coral Springs, and the chaplain for the St. Ann group, Father Silverio Rueda, celebrated the Mass.
Then our new-found Polish friends, Father Wrobel and Father Sputek, told us a bit of their church’s history. It was built outside the walls of Cieszyn and has a cemetery on the grounds that, until World War II, was used to bury the city’s poor.
The church also has a relic of St. Faustina, is adorned with images of Divine Mercy and St. John Paul II, and has a stained glass window depicting St. Maximilian Kolbe, the priest killed in Auschwitz.
Before we left, we all posed for what Father Wrobel referred to as “a family picture” — certainly a harbinger of what’s to come as we encounter other pilgrims to World Youth Day.
As Father Garcia said in his homily, “We walk together… Allow this pilgrimage to not simply be an opportunity to visit Poland. But an opportunity to let the Lord encounter you."
You can follow the pilgrims on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by using the hashtag #WYDMiami16. And read my reports, which I’ll post as often as I can, on the archdiocesan website, www.miamiarch.org.
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