Teacher Pilgrims at World Youth Day: Community, Plausibility and Transcendence as Important Hermeneutical Keys

World Youth Day (WYD) is a significant, reoccurring event in the contemporary Catholic Church. The Church remains in a transitional period marked by the disappearance and emergence of institutional structures. One major challenge is the capacity of the Church to nurture younger Catholics in the face of an increasingly dominant secular culture. This is a major concern of Catholic school systems which require large numbers of committed teachers to retain authenticity. WYD addresses the needs of religiously active teachers by, amongst other things, providing them with experiences of being part of a moral community and of the transcendent element of religious life. Both of these are often lacking in the conventional lives of many younger teachers. Encountering them at WYD all contributes to sustaining religious plausibility.