This year’s Youth Prayer Festival in Medjugorje will last from August 1 to 6, and it is being held for the 35th time. This year, the Youth Festival is being held at its usual date, the first days of August, which was moved last year due to the World Youth Meeting in Lisbon.
The spiritual renewal for the youth begins on Thursday, August 1 with an evening prayer program. The official opening is after the rosary, which takes place from 6 p.m., and is right before the Holy Mass.
The second day of the Youth Festival begins at six o’clock in the morning with the prayer of the Rosary on Apparition Hill, just at the statue of Our Lady, and continues with the morning program that starts at 9 o’clock and includes prayer, catechesis and testimonies. At noon, the Angelus follows, and the program on the White Dome of the church of St. James continues with testimonies from 4 p.m., then the Rosary from 6 p.m., and the Holy Mass is celebrated from 7 p.m.
The morning and afternoon program are similar on each day from Monday to Saturday, while on Sunday, August 4, the program at the White Dome is only in the afternoon, from 4 p.m., and in the morning Holy Masses are celebrated by different language groups.
This year’s Youth Festival, as in the previous years, ends with a Holy Mass on Cross Mountain starting at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, August 6.
Simultaneous translation into Croatian, English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Czech, Korean, Arabic, Chinese Mandarin and Chinese Cantonese is provided during the entire duration of the Youth Festival.
The organizers invite everyone who will participate at the Youth Festival to bring a small radio with FM frequency and headphones, a Holy Bible, and a parasole/umbrella. They would like to remind those who will take part in the Youth Festival not to plan other programs, and they wish to inform the pilgrims that during the duration of the encounter for the youth (except on Sunday) there will not be Holy Masses in the morning, because all pilgrims will take part in the evening prayer program, together with the youth.
