Korean bishop says WYD Seoul will be ‘sacramental way’
"There is never a moment that God doesn’t love his children."
The auxiliary bishop of Seoul, who is serving as the general coordinator for World Youth Day 2027, believes the upcoming international youth event will be a moment for the Holy Spirit to act in a special way. He said he hopes participants will be inspired by the history of the Church in Korea, which endured a century of persecution that produced some 10,000 martyrs.
“We are waiting and expecting the Holy Spirit to work on each pilgrim, so they can interact with the Holy Father and, in a mysterious way, experience something about God,” Bishop Kyung-Sang Lee told The Pillar.
Asked about his hopes for the upcoming World Youth Day, the bishop said he does not want to impose his own expectations on the event, but rather, he wants to make room for the Holy Spirit to work.
Unlike at school, he said, where teachers prepare their classes with specific expectations of what their students will learn, “we will be giving the space for Jesus to work, and he will be having them drawn to himself, in a sacramental way.”
Lee spoke with The Pillar during the June gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Orlando.
He also addressed the bishops at the conference, inviting them to send the youth of their dioceses to World Youth Day in Seoul next year. South Korea, he said, is a powerful witness of the ability to rebuild after devastation, even as the country still bears the wounds of the Korean War and ongoing division between north and south.
While Lee wants to leave room for the Holy Spirit to work in unique ways in the lives of World Youth Day participants, he does hope that they come away from the experience with a renewed sense of hope.
He said organizers are planning to highlight the unique history of the Catholic Church in Korea, which was founded not by foreign missionaries, but almost entirely by Korean laity who discovered Catholic texts from Beijing.
While the Church initially grew, terrible century-long persecutions threatened to wipe out the faith in the country, and some 10,000 believers were martyred.
“From a numerical perspective, we would be a devastated Church, because most of the first believers were killed,” he told The Pillar.
“It is very mysterious how God worked in the Church of Korea, how he rebuilt it, and made it flourish and yield fruit,” he reflected. “We would like to show the young people the history of Korea, so they might be able to find hope in the sufferings and difficulties they are facing.”
The bishop hopes World Youth Day will be an evangelizing moment for Korea as well as the international youth who attend. Catholics are a minority in South Korea, making up only some 11% of the population.
But Lee thinks there is fertile ground for encounter between the Church and the broader culture, particularly surrounding the subjects of technology and artificial intelligence, which have been heated topics in the country.
While many countries are pursuing advancements in AI with little concern for the implications of doing so, many scholars and authorities in Korea – including the president — agree with the concerns voiced by Pope Leo in his recent encyclical about the need to ensure that AI supports human values instead of threatening them, he said.
“In this way, the Church and the society are coming to a meeting point,” he said, adding that cooperation for World Youth Day could be a further chance for encounter.
Lee invited World Youth Day participants to prepare spiritually by reflecting on the theme selected for this year’s event – the words of Christ: “Take courage, for I have conquered the world.”
He said he has seen the consistent loving hand of God throughout his own life, and he hopes the pilgrims at the upcoming World Youth Day are similarly able to recognize God’s providence, especially through the inevitable difficulties of a global pilgrimage.
While practical preparations are well in hand, the bishop said, inevitable difficulties and suffering were an essential part of any pilgrim experience and something he hoped travellers would embrace as a moment to rely on providence.
“I would invite them to face the hardships with courage,” he told The Pillar. “We also have fears in preparation, but I am not afraid. Every night I sleep well because I have experience throughout my life that God miraculously works.”
“There is never a moment that God doesn’t love his children, so I invite the pilgrims to give him the chance, to let them experience how he is, how he’s loving and how he is inviting all of them to take courage and have hope,” said the bishop.