WYD communicates the joy of young people’s encounters

By Francesca Merlo and Edoardo Giribaldi

Ana Alvez, Director of Communication at World Youth Day 2023, found the involvement of people from all over the world to be the “most amazing thing about this job,” or, as she likes to call it, “a grace.”

Over 20 languages

Together with her team, she is responsible for all the WYD social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and also TikTok.

Specifically, the Facebook page is available in 20 languages, “which is truly incredible,” according to Alvez, highlighting how volunteers are active not only in Portugal but worldwide.

The Head of Communication also mentioned the WYD website, the design team, “responsible for every image that you see here in Lisbon, and the WYD TV, “a channel broadcasting all the main events, also from the pilgrims’ perspective.”

Communicate to the world

The effort is relevant considering that “all of this has to be communicated to the whole world.”

This includes not only the translation in the WYD's five official languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French and English) but also many others, through the work of interpreters that translate all the main events through a special frequency, so that “every pilgrim can listen to them on the radio in their local language.”

Communication is about more than just informing people about an event. “We want to communicate what we call the theological fundamental,” a concept developed by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, based on “evangelization.”

WYD's messages

“Tolerance, union, the possibility to gather different cultures in the same space,” are other concepts that WYD can communicate, together with “peace, so important in these days, especially in Europe.”

Much attention was also given to messages related to sustainability, based on Pope Francis’ Laudato si' encyclical.

WYD's message, according to Alvez, should also include a sense of inclusiveness, even in terms of coverage from non-Catholic media.

"Transmit the joy"

“WYD is for everybody,” the Head of Communication affirmed. “For people outside the Church somehow it was difficult to understand why this is for everybody.” However, the messages conveyed and their relevance is “common worldwide. Whether in Portugal or all over the world.”

With 2,500 credentials that were released to media organizations from all over the world, the challenge for them is “to transmit the joy” perceived in the encounter of young people. Something “that is difficult to explain through words, but if you see it, you feel there is something very special about this.”

"Speak with the heart"

The final message for all the journalists present at WYD recalled Pope Francis’ words to “speak with the heart,” from young people’s angle.

“Yesterday I was walking through Lisbon at midnight and I saw young people walking and singing in a very joyful and peaceful way. And this is something really, really special,” Alvez concluded.