Celebrate World Youth Day With A Craft!

Today is the first day of World Youth Day 2011! Whoo Hoo! I have such a soft place in my heart for WYD since attending WYD 2002 in Toronto, Canada. We rode on a bus, slept in church gyms all the way there and back, saw Pope John Paul II, met Catholics from all over the world, ate some seriously weird food, carried everything we brought for more than 8 miles, slept in a field, attended a Papal Mass, and made memories to last a lifetime!

As a teenager, I attended Catholic youth conferences at a diocesan, state, national, and world level. I know that these conferences made me the Catholic that I am today!

World Youth Day, 2002

Everywhere we went there were flags, flags, and more flags!

Everyone was proudly waiving their country and state flags everywhere you went! It was beautiful! On the way walking back to the church one night, I stumbled on a Canadian hot dog vendor that was selling World Youth Day trinkets, and he had  Papal flags. I thought "Even though we are all here from so many different countries, we are all united as Catholics under the Papal flag!" So I haggled with him and I bought one. :-)

How to Craft a Papal Flag for World Youth Day

Materials Needed:

• Markers
• Masking Tape
• Pipe Cleaner
• Clay

Start by educating yourself a little bit about the Vatican (aka Papal) flag. The Vatican is one of the only countries in the world with a square flag! The yellow and white bands symbolize gold and silver. The keys on the flag represent the keys to the Church given to St. Peter by Jesus. You can also see the papal tiara on the flag, and a red cord connecting the keys.

Start by cutting your pipe cleaner into a small flag pole. Wrap a piece of masking tape around for the flag at the top.

 Once you stick the masking tape together, decorate with markers to be a simple Vatican flag design.

Stick a small ball of clay at the bottom to hold your flag up. You're all finished! 

Of course, you can make any flag this way. We also made some USA flags while we were at it. 

And now to move onto the bragging (ahem) 

here are some pictures I took of John Paul II at World Youth Day!

These pictures are so old they were actually taken with film! Lol! ;-)

World Youth day 2011 is in Madrid, Spain! 

Say a prayer for all the youth attending! :-)

And here is a seriously random picture of myself under a sign somewhere in Canada that said "Lacy". :-)

For nostalgia's sake, I leave you with a piece of the theme song from World Youth Day 2002: "The Light of the Wolrd, Christ is our Light, We shine with His brightness, the reflection of His Light from day to day!" That song was sung so much that week that I can actually still sing it in French! (Although I would NOT attempt to type it in French- lol!) Any of you ever been to World Youth Day?

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