Trids in Köln

From the WYD Desk, a ZENIT reminder about Juventutem:

At least 3,000 youths and 60 priests of a group supportive of the Latin Mass of Pope Pius V plan to attend World Youth Day in Cologne, an official says.

Three-thousand? Quite a number. Let's see if it pans out....

The first Juventutem group was made up of followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who met in Brazil. For the past three years, Juventutem has been in full communion with the Church of Rome. Its members will attend the Aug. 21 Mass presided over by Benedict XVI.

What a way to mark a third birthday -- their first ever Novus Ordo liturgy. Isn't it ironic?

In the preceding days, at 7:30 a.m. the Juventutem group will attend a Mass celebrated in Latin in the old rite, in the Church of St. Antonius in Duesseldorf, which, together with Bonn and Cologne, is one of the three areas in which World Youth Day events will be held.

The church was assigned to them by the Pontifical Council for the Laity with the approval of Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne.

Meisner is the German hierarchy's lead conservative; as if he'd disapprove?

For all the anxieties which could be had about this, it is an encouraging sign. And they're pulling out the heavy hitters -- Arinze, Pell, George, Burke, and the Brazilian bishop of Campos who is Catholicism's only full-time Tridentine bishop.

In other Cologne news, the Pope's schedule for the three-day trip is making the rounds. B16 is celebrating mass in private for two of the days at the Archbishop's Residence.... Whether this is strictly private (i.e. just Georg, Ingrid, Carmela and Loredana) or if some of the young people are invited to join remains to be seen.

And, in an interesting touch given the impending Federal elections in September, the first German Pope since Luther will be meeting not only with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (who, according to opinion polls, will lose his bid for re-election), but also with Angela Merkel, the leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Union who is tipped to take the Chancellor's office from Schroeder's Social Democrats. Wolfgang Thierse, the speaker of the Bundestag (a former GDR Communist), rounds out the group.

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