The Holy Spirit sometimes works in mysterious ways, but during World Youth Day in Lisbon the fruits of the Spirit were manifest in cheerfulness, mutual respect, joyful mingling of nationalities and reverence for the Sacraments as 1.5 million young people gathered for a celebration of the Catholic faith. The story of the Church in Europe has not been wholly happy in recent years – witness the revelations of clerical abuse in the host nation – but this event was a resounding contradiction of those who think of Catholicism as something for the old, something of the past. Tom Colsy’s reports for the Herald show that, behind the statistics of decline, there are groups of determined, counter-cultural young people – some from unexpected places such as the Netherlands – who find in the Church and her promise of salvation both community and hope. The only disappointment was that this remarkable gathering barely registered in most of the European media; a similar gathering for, say, the environmental movement would have elicited far more interested comment.