KEY POINTS:
The sound of New Zealand rolled across World Youth Day late yesterday as Sydney Cardinal George Pell celebrated a two-hour opening Mass with an estimated 140,000 pilgrims.
With dusk settling over east Darling Harbour, a group from Auckland's Hato Petera College sang in Maori during communion, joining the blaze of national cultures, colours and flags that in the past few days have taken over Australia's biggest city.
Later in the week Clare Dooley, from Christchurch, will be one of 21 young pilgrims joining Pope Benedict XVI for lunch, and Josie Leota, a Samoan New Zealander from Wellington, will MC a Saturday night vigil.
Pell's opening Mass, with as many as 4000 priests, 400 bishops and 26 cardinals joining the sea of pilgrims, was the largest he has performed.
The cardinal drew on the imagery of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, drawing parallels between his prophesies of resurrection from the symbolic valley of dry bones and the prospect of new life for Christians.
"It is one of the most spectacular, in some ways terrifying, images in the whole of the Bible," WYD coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher said.
"It's evocative for Australians because we've been in drought now for more than a decade and some of our farms look like that - dried out with the carcases and now just the bones of the dead animals."
Pilgrims received a special message from the Pope - by text.
"Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI," read the first of the Pope's daily text messages which will be sent out.
Throughout downtown Sydney, swarms of pilgrims chanting, singing and thronging streets in yellow, orange and red backpacks have been spreading the message.
Thousands more poured into the city yesterday, jamming the inner-city Chippendale back street that has been taken over for pilgrim registration.
On Monday, the day of the biggest influx, pilgrims waited for three hours or more to get their passes and backpacks.
Yesterday the wait was still well over an hour, with coffee-vendors steering their trays of flat whites and lattes past groups of Californians turning old 1960s standards into bop beats with a "praise God" chorus, and Australians calling their familiar "ozzie, ozzie, ozzie, oi, oi, oi" to each other.
While they waited, volunteers from an Inverell, New South Wales, based organisation, the Dantonia Community, handed out free copies of a 1996 book "Sex, God and Marriage." with a foreword by the late Mother Teresa, and a more recent endorsement by Pope Benedict.
They went like hotcakes.
And WYD organisers and the NSW Government suffered defeat at the hands of two NoToPope Coalition protesters, Amber Pike and Rachel Evans. The pair had challenged special state laws outlawing the "annoying" of WYD pilgrims, but the Federal Court ruled yesterday that the definitions of "annoyance" and "inconvenience" were too broad.
Police are also trying to track down pilgrims believed responsible for spray-painting the Hyde Park war memorial with "Ratzinger rules", referring to the German-born Pope's former name.
WYD HIGHLIGHTS
TODAY
* 250 catechesis (religious teaching sessions) for pilgrims across Sydney (all week)
* National group meetings, including New Zealand's 4000 pilgrims
THURSDAY
* Pope Benedict arrives by boat at Circular Quay, and parades through downtown Sydney in the Popemobile
FRIDAY
* Stations of the Cross: a re-enactment of Christ's final hours
SATURDAY
* Pilgrims-only walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge.
* Evening vigil with Pope Benedict and a sleepover under the stars for the hardy at Randwick Racecourse and Centennial Park
SUNDAY
* The Pope flies in by helicopter and travels to Randwick by motorcade
* Final Mass celebrated by the Pope
