Canadian bishops and World Youth Day 2002: On the transnational and political history of Catholicism
In July 2002, Canada hosted World Youth Day, an international event addressing youth organized by the Catholic Church. From a perspective of transnational history, this article seeks to capture the way in which the bishops of Canada appropriated an instrument conceived in Rome. From a perspective of political history, it studies the centre-periphery dynamics within the Catholic world, analyzing the relationship between Canadian bishops and the Roman Curia. The article also looks at how the Canadian episcopate at the federal and provincial levels managed World Youth Day 2002, and compares this to how French bishops (from France) had come about to agree on hosting World Youth Day in 1997.