BY PRISCILLA GREEAR

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--Over 30 young adults from the Archdiocese of Atlanta, accompanied by lay ministers and priests, went to Paris to participate in World Youth Day events with Pope John Paul II.

A group of 22 youth 16 to 19 years old from St. Catherine of Siena Church in Kennesaw, chaperoned by Father Francis McNamee and Pat Rivera, departed Aug. 16 with other young people from the Youth 2000 program, which plans Eucharist-centered retreats.

Another group of 10 youth, 17 and 18 years old, represented parishes including St. Theresa's in Douglasville and the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta and the Alleluia Community in Augusta.

Accompanied by Janice Murphy, archdiocesan director of young adult ministry, Lisa Falchero-Wheeler, director of youth ministry at St. Theresa's, and Father David Dye, administrator of Mary Our Queen Church in Norcross, the group departed Aug. 14 as part of a pilgrimage organized by the Emmanuel Community, a Paris-based international Catholic association of the faithful. The Atlanta French Catholic community helped the young people make arrangements to join this pilgrimage. The group of 22 plans to return Aug. 26 while the others plan to return Aug. 27.

Approximately 12,000 young people from throughout the U.S. converged on France, with their backpacks and Bibles, for World Youth Day Aug. 19-24 and preceding spiritual programs. An estimated 400,000 internationally were to take part in events including a Mass at which the pope will beatify Frederic Ozanam, who founded the St. Vincent de Paul Society as a 20-year-old Paris student in 1833. World Youth Day also focused on St. Therese of Lisieux, whose spirituality influences millions although she lived to be only 24.

The general program featured bishops and cardinals teaching on the Catholic faith and a festival of spiritual and cultural events including debates, plays and concerts throughout the city. The pope was to be welcomed by pilgrims Aug. 21 at Champs de Mars below the Eiffel Tower.

Lisa Bohn, youth minister at St. Catherine's, said that Americans from Youth 2000 have been honored with the responsibility of planning and leading eucharistic adoration at certain holy hours during the international event. Pilgrims from St. Catherine's were required to participate in weekly eucharistic adoration for a year and attend a conversational French class before the conference.

Following the conference the youth with the Emmanuel group were to travel to Lisieux to study the life of St. Therese.

Father McNamee said the Eucharist would be a dominant theme of World Youth Day events. Evangelization is another conference focus and Bohn believes the pope will challenge attendees to evangelize others with their Catholic faith prior to the year 2000.

"Through this meeting, many will be transformed from within and they will feel a strong urgency to mission. As the disciples, they will become evangelizers because they will have met the Lord, they will recognize Christ as being the center of their existence, the Church as being the common house and the world as the place for announcing the Good News," wrote Bishop Renato Boccardo, an organizer of World Youth Day, in a message to youth.

Participation in World Youth Day events should make young people return home as "messengers of hope and witnesses of the merciful love of the Lord," Pope John Paul II said Aug. 17 before departing for Paris.

Continuing his Sunday Angelus talks about the Aug. 19-24 event, the pope asked Catholics of every age "to support that great occasion with your prayers."

Addressing young people from a balcony over the courtyard at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, the pope said, "My most cordial wish is that the enthusiasm proper to your age will help the whole people of God become aware of the very high vocation to which God calls it."

The example of committed and enthusiastic Catholic youths can give special encouragement to other young people who are looking for meaning in their lives, he said.

The sharing, dialogue, reflection, liturgical celebrations and contemplation that make up World Youth Day "will help you to live in a new way the presence and action of the Holy Spirit," he said.

"Confirmed in the faith and aware of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, received in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, you will return to your countries of origin with renewed zeal," the pope told them.