Altar-stage? “Chosen area was a smaller area of the city of Lisbon”
THE The deputy mayor of Lisbon City Council (CML), Filipe Anacoreta Correia, presents the Plan and Investment for the 16th edition of the World Youth Day (WYD), which is the responsibility of the municipality.
The mayor explains, in a press conference, what the CML is developing with regard to this event, because he considers it important that the entire population and citizens “be informed and aware” of what will be done.
“First, having the notion that, since the first WYD, and there were only 15, this is a large-scale event, with great incorporation, bringing together a very exciting group of young people. In 2019, the Pope announced that Lisbon was the chosen capital. In 2021, this Executive won the ceremony and took on this dossier with great effort and with a sense of the importance of this candidacy that already had almost three years on the road”, began by saying Filipe Anacoreta Correia.
The event, which will take place between the 1st and 6th of August this year, will gather around “one million people” and will have several “great moments”, as highlighted by the vice-president of the municipality.
“What was asked of CML is to deal with the structure of the stage where the Pope will be [o altar-palco]. The chosen area was an embankment, a smaller area of the city of Lisbon. When looking at the event here, it was challenging, create the entire infrastructure of an area that corresponds to 38 football fieldswhich is transformed from a landfill to a park”, he underlines.
Acoreta Correia reveals that a new space was also found, Parque Eduardo VII, to open the event – where a ceremony presided over by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon will take place – and to receive Pope Francis in the city of Lisbon.
“The welcome/reception of the Pope is a moment of Lisbon’s own affirmation, because it will be in the center of the city, the images for the world will be of the city center. And then, a Way of the Cross that will take place on the eve of the big moment, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday”.
The mayor also points out that WYD will have a poster with “many Portuguese artists”, whose names they did not want to divulge so as not to anticipate the disclosure of the poster.
Remember that the president of the CML, Carlos Moedas, said yesterday that he knew that the construction of the stage altar for the World Youth Day (WYD) would be very expensiveindicating that it will be held to Church specifications.
This observation by the mayor comes after it became public that the construction work on the altar-stage where Pope Francis will celebrate a mass will cost 4.2 million euros to the Lisbon City Council, directly.
According to information made available on the Public Training Base Portal, “the construction was awarded for 4.24 million euros (plus VAT)”, adding to that value “1.06 million euros for the indirect foundations of the roof”.
“We want this stage, this infrastructure, to stay for the future and that many of these infrastructures invade for the future. I knew that this was going to be very expensive, that it was a very big investment for the city”, indicated Moedas.
World Youth Day is the biggest meeting of young Catholics from all over the world with the Pope, which takes place every two or three years, between July and August.
Lisbon was the city chosen in 2019 to host the 2022 meetingwhich was moved to 2023 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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