Not to be confused with International Youth Day or World Festival of Youth and Students.
World Youth Day (WYD) is an event for young people organized every three (or sometimes, two) years by the Catholic Church. The next occasion, World Youth Day 2016, will be held 25–31 July 2016 in Kraków, Poland.[1]
World Youth Day was initiated by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985. For the first celebration of WYD in 1986, bishops all over the world were invited to schedule an annual youth event to be held every Palm Sunday in their dioceses.
It is celebrated at the diocesan level annually, and at the international level every two to three years at different locations. The 1995 World Youth Day closing Mass in the Philippines set a world record for the largest number of people gathered for a single religious event (with 5 million attendees)— a record surpassed when 6 million attended a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in the Philippines 20 years later in 2015.