The main topic

Historic persons such as Caiaphas, Pilate, Judas and others bear direct responsibility for the passion and death of Jesus. However, they acted on behalf of all sinners who hate God — those who, enslaved by Satan, are plunged in the darkness of sin and death.

No one actually witnessed the moment of Christ’s resurrection. Before His body was laid in the tomb, it had been wrapped in a linen cloth, about thirteen and half feet long and four and a quarter feet wide. This burial shroud was also a kind of cover, sheet or napkin (sodara). The body was laid lengthwise along one half of it, while the other half covered the front of the body from the face to the feet.

Jesus died on the cross on Friday at 3 p.m. The Jewish holy day of the Sabbath would begin in three hours. Jewish law forbade the washing of a dead body on the Sabbath.

Only after John Paul’s arrival in this country, and the streets of Toronto were filled with hundreds of thousands of young people from 170 countries, giving joyful witness to their faith, did the Canadian mass media begin to reverse their negative view of World Youth Day.

The most important event of World Youth Day was the Holy Mass celebrated by the Pope on Sunday, July 28th, on the grounds of the disused military airfield at Downsview Park. Since early Saturday morning, innumerable groups of singing and praying youth had walked the 10-kilometer distance, braving sweltering temperatures, in order to get to their meeting place with Christ in the Eucharist. By evening, when the prayer vigil began, a vast crowd of up to 600 thousand had filled the grounds.