Band of Priests Give Concert to Raise Money for World Youth Day 2023
CV NEWS FEED // A band of priests is raising money to help send young people to World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, this August.
The fundraiser will help cover the travel expenses of the nearly 400 young people who intend to join the priests on the pilgrimage.
From the Archdiocese of Washington, “Priests in Concert” members all attended Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Hyattsville, Maryland. The group came together soon after the diocesan priests’ first successful music event drew a large crowd.
The members, Fr. Pawel Sass, Fr. Yan Pietryga, Fr. Grzegorz Okulewicz, Fr. Mattia Fr Cortigiani, Fr. Philip Ilg, Fr. John Benson, Fr. Salulo Vicente, Fr. Emanuel Lucero, and Fr. Daniele Rebeggiani, all belong to the Catholic evangelization movement the Neocatechumenal Way.
Fr Daniele Rebeggiani, the secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington D.C., shared details about the group’s mission with the Catholic News Agency, calling their event “a night of music and witness.”
The concert will include a setlist of classic popular hits, such as Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey,” and testimonies related to vocation from priests and laypeople.
The priests have raised $20,000 through ticket sales and donations from the first concert in June. Their next concert will be held at a local Maryland parish on Friday night.
Fr. Rebeggiani expressed hopes that the experience of World Youth Day will help to guide the young people in attendance toward an understanding of God’s love for them. He hopes they will understand “that their life has value—that it’s not like [God] is indifferent to their suffering.”
He wants them to “have an experience of doing something for God and experience the joy of living for God,” he added:
And have the desire to really abandon their plans to enter the plans that God has because, in my case, the plan that God had was so much better than the plans that I had, and so I’m sure that that’s the same for each one of the youth that will be going.
Information about “Priests in Concert” can be found on their website.
