“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
A line immortal to a generation of cinema goers, given new life through social media, went down a treat last Friday with the 500 students and 250 young adults who joined Archbishop Anthony Fisher in marking one year to go to World Youth Day (WYD) in Krakow.
The character from the 1987 film The Princess Bride loosely resembled another Inigo, the archbishop said: Inigo Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus and one of Christianity’s greatest, if unlikely, heroes.
The one-time soldier’s raucous existence of “wine, women and song, gambling, fashion and brawling” was all but shaken to its foundations when the future St Ignatius encountered God; an adventure which would last the rest of his life, spurring him on to great things.
WYD was made of the same stuff, he said, speaking at a Catholic Education Office (CEO) Sydney event at All Saints College in Liverpool that morning, and to the young adults at Catholic Youth Services’ (CYS) Gracefest, in the evening.
“Catholicism is the greatest truth-and-mercy adventure that there is,” he said.
“My hope is that your WYD preparations and subsequent pilgrimage will jumpstart you into that epic adventure, sometimes comic, sometimes heroic, that is life in Christ; that it will set you up for such a life in your future studies
, work and leisure, friendships, marriage and family, and the rest.”
At Gracefest, Archbishop Fisher joined the young people in Adoration and Benediction.
CYS also announced its new Youth Ministry Partnership Program and the graduated rates at which young people could earn money towards WYD by serving as youth ministers at parishes.
Earlier that day, the executive director of CEO Sydney, Dr Dan White, said that any student who joined the schools’ WYD pilgrimage would receive $500 towards his or her costs.