SAN DIEGO — More than 750 Catholic teens are expected to attend the upcoming San Diego Youth Day.
Sponsored by the diocesan Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, the annual event will be held on Saturday, April 26, at Mater Dei Catholic High School in Chula Vista.
San Diego Youth Day is for high school students, grades nine through 12, who register as parish groups. The event will run from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and will include praise and worship led by Wildlands Worship, a keynote presentation by nationally-known speaker Alex Gotay, lunch, three sessions of workshops, opportunities for the sacrament of confession, and a closing Mass celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano.
The theme will be “Encounter Emmaus,” taken from Luke 24:13-35, where two dispirited disciples encounter the risen Jesus on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus and fail to recognize him at first. They are initially downcast, believing that their messianic hopes have been dashed by the crucifixion of Jesus, who eventually reveals himself to them in a celebration of the Eucharist.
Local Catholic youth have moments when “they feel desolate, they feel alone,” said Maricruz Flores Strauss, director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry. The event is about providing a space where “we encounter our ‘Emmaus’ together.”
Janelle Peregoy, associate director of the diocesan Office for Family Life and Spirituality, will present a workshop on grief.
Franciscan Father Lalo Jara, pastor of Mission San Luis Rey Parish in Oceanside, will present one on Blessed Carlo Acutis, an Italian teen who used his computer savvy to spread devotion to the Eucharist online before his death from leukemia. Blessed Carlo is scheduled to be canonized by Pope Francis on April 27.
Father Jara will be bringing a first-class relic of Blessed Carlo to San Diego Youth Day.
There will also be a “thematic park” period, during which attendees can play games, visit vendor booths, and take part in various hands-on activities.
Evelyn Knuff, an associate director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, said that this year’s event will break up its traditional vocations panel into men’s and women’s panels.
She said that they are also adding a “Year After High School” panel, featuring young adults who are “living out their faith in different life situations” one year after their high school graduation. Panelists might include those who are attending college, working full-time, doing missionary work, or taking a “gap year.”
“There can be so much anxiety at the end of high school of ‘What’s next? What’s my life going to look like next year?’” said Knuff. The panel is expected to deliver “a message of hope into that experience and show that, no matter where you go, God’s always with you and your faith is always going to be a part of you.”
Brilema Perez, also an associate director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, drew a connection between this year’s San Diego Youth Day and the ongoing Jubilee Year 2025, whose theme is “Pilgrims of Hope.”
“(Hope is) a good theme to really ponder and to try to live out,” she said, “especially in those years of transition, of discernment of what they want to do after they graduate high school and how they are being called also to walk with Jesus in the different stages of their life.”
She said that the organizers want the teens to be able to “look back at this event as a reminder of that calling of hope.”
The cost to attend San Diego Youth Day is $50 per person .For more information, contact Teresa Sotelo at (858) 490-8260 or tsotelo@sdcatholic.org.
