Playful delegates get down to some fun

Pilgrims find inspiration in many ways, including mingling with the opposite sex

By GRAEME SMITH, The Globe and Mail
Thursday, July 25, 2002

He came for the more inspiring sights on display at Exhibition Place yesterday afternoon as two local 17-year-olds, Jenni-Anne Lane and Jessica Reinhardt, stripped down to their bikini tops and frolicked in a fountain together.

After the perky young women climbed out of the water, he cajoled them into giving him their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. They were the latest additions to his black book with names of girls from half a dozen countries.

"Carlos is lucky today," Mr. Gomez said, grinning.

The encounter wasn't unusual. Although many pilgrims say they're chaste, many others interviewed at World Youth Day events said they've got sex on their minds as hundreds of thousands of young Roman Catholics from around the world gather for the week-long religious festival.

It's hardly surprising that pheromones fill the air at an event for 16- to 35-year-olds, many of them far away from home and unsupervised. Advertisements for World Youth Day even tease, "Who in the world will you meet? God only knows."

But these are people who have been strongly discouraged from obeying their reproductive instincts.

Organizers have told volunteers to avoid touching each other except for simple handshakes, they've given pilgrims a 1 a.m. curfew, and most participants are sleeping in church basements or on gymnasium floors that afford little privacy for trysts.

The pilgrims are also deluged with dogma, such as the "pure love" pamphlet handed out yesterday.

It condemns such sins as homosexuality, pornography, contraception, sex before marriage, passionate kissing, petting, "lying down together," and immodest clothes.

"Perhaps a woman's most fascinating trait is the mystery of her femininity," the pamphlet advises. "Modesty in dress preserves this mystery."

Such advice was cheerfully ignored yesterday by the dozens of teenagers who climbed into the fountain behind the stage where the Pope will appear today.

Wearing a blue bikini decorated with images of palm trees, Ms. Reinhardt said the religious festival is just a chance to escape her Southern Ontario town.

"We skipped out of the mass and went to the mall," she said.

Elsewhere, François Polverelli was doing backflips on the sidewalk as girls shrieked with delight.

"Do I use [a] condom?" asked the 19-year-old from Paris. "Of course. The Pope say, don't choose that. But we humans are bad, you know, so I use condoms, sure."

Many other pilgrims say they're simply making platonic friendships, exchanging e-mail addresses in hopes of finding pen pals.

"Those people who are just here for the sex shouldn't be here," said Julia Fox, 17, from Philadelphia.

But her friend, Erin Plank, 17, said there's nothing wrong with scouting for a husband, adding that one of her friends already got a marriage proposal.

Every participant defined his or her sexual rules differently. Emil Contreras, 23, from Winnipeg, chatted with girls who posed for pictures with him next to his giant Canadian flag.

But he wouldn't flirt inside any of the World Youth Day events. "There's a time and place for everything," Mr. Contreras said. "Inside the mass, we're not hitting on girls."

Does any of the flirting actually become sex?

"I'm sure there are lots of people who will be getting extra-friendly with people from abroad," said his friend, Ernest Lacuna, 24.

"That's the blind spot [of the Church]," Mr. Contreras added. "You got a lot of people preaching, but how many are actually following?"