Bishops unfazed by $38M WYD deficit

By ART BABYCH
Canadian Catholic News
Cornwall, Ont.

Instead, the more than 80 bishops stood in solidarity in applauding the work of their WYD organizing

committee, national director Father Thomas Rosica and the youth who staged the event in Toronto July 23-28.

The most ambitious event in the history of the Church in Canada, World Youth Day 2002 cost over three times more than was originally estimated, brought in the lowest number of registered pilgrims in the 16-year history of the event and resulted in a $38-million deficit.

Diocesan bishops had agreed earlier to underwrite any deficit incurred through WYD based on the Catholic population in the dioceses. They now face the challenge of raising the funds through parish collections, loans, cashing in on investments or through other means.

"We weren't spending like drunken sailors." - Archbishop Anthony Meagher

"We weren't spending like drunken sailors, we just weren't collecting like we thought and we cut back," said Archbishop Anthony Meagher, chair of the bishops' WYD committee.

He told the CCCB plenary assembly Oct. 18, "This was not a case of WYD under Father Rosica going off and spending all kinds of money and then finding out that we'd overspent. Spending was actually well less than budget but the income didn't materialize that we thought would come in."

A total of 187,000 registered youth attended but the last budget for the event was based on 350,000 registrations. Meagher said the operations budget had been set at $57.3 million but that only $43.4 million was spent.

As well, only $7 million of the transportation budget of $42.9 million was required, he said. The reason was that by April "we cut everybody back and decided we won't have all these feeding stations all around Toronto and would centralize everything at the waterfront, which saved huge sums of money," said the archbishop. The budget for security was also chopped from $10.7 million to $1.6 million.

Meagher, 61, also praised Rosica for doing an "outstanding job" with the Toronto media which, he said, "certainly have never been pro-Church." The support of the media was "absolutely phenomenal."

The vice chair of the WYD committee, Bishop Francois Lapierre of Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., said the deficit "is not a catastrophe" and that the spiritual fruit of WYD is already evident in the dioceses.

"I feel there is a new communion between the Church and youth," Lapierre observed. However, he added, "The challenge is the follow-up."

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