LOCAL TEENS WILL TRAVEL TO DENVER TO SEE POPE

When Pope John Paul II addresses teens at World Youth Day later this week in Denver, Colo., about 30 young people from Cape Girardeau will be in the audience.

The teens from St. Vincent de Paul and St. Mary parishes in Cape Girardeau leave for Denver on Tuesday.

Over 168,000 youths 118,000 of them Americans have registered for the Denver event. The pope has said he hopes the gathering will bring the young people "ever-greater enthusiasm and fidelity in following Christ and in joyfully welcoming his message."

His stay in Denver includes a meeting with young people in Mile High Stadium a few hours after his arrival from Mexico on Thursday and a Mass on Sunday in Cherry Creek State Park.

World Youth Day is actually a week-long event that starts Wednesday. The culmination of the week is an all-night vigil Friday. Pope John Paul II will say Mass on Saturday morning with all the attendees

"For me it's really exciting. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Jodie Eichhorn, who will be a junior at Notre Dame High School.

"I've done a lot of praying and I'm really thankful I'm one of the people going on this trip. I feel extremely lucky as a young Catholic to have a chance to do something like this.

Eichhorn called the trip "an experience that I know I will never forget."

She said she doesn't know how close she and the others will be to the pope.

"I do know when we have the midnight Mass on the mountain we will be sleeping outside and we are supposed to bring radios so we can hear him," she said. "But for me just to be out there is enough."

"It is very exciting," said Joan Strohmeyer, a chaperon for the trip. "We consider it to be a religious pilgrimage. "We are taking buses and sleeping on gym floors. We have a six-mile hike to the park where pope will speaking."

"They call it a pilgrimage," Eichhorn echoed. "That means it's going to be a hard and I'm going to have to work. We have to walk a lot, but that will bring me closer to God so I can better understand what he went through when he died on the cross."

Eichhorn said she and the other teens attending have held a variety of fund-raising events to defray expenses, including a pancake breakfast and a play.