William Oddie: Those two million young Catholics are just so unfashionable. Long may it remain so

William Oddie, writing in the Catholic Herald, lauds the "serenity and steadfastness" of the WYD attendees during the thunderstorm which broke loose at Saturday's prayer vigil:

But all the same, the abiding reflection left in the mind by that frightening gale, perhaps not of all those who were there (especially if they couldn’t see anything much) but certainly of many – and even of some at least of those who could not be there, of those who were sitting comfortably at home at the time – will surely be that though itself perhaps not of God, the occasion this great tempest presented for God’s grace to manifest itself (obstacles are so often occasions of grace) was very striking. As an act of witness, the spectacle in the mind’s eye of over a million (some said as many as two million) young people kneeling in the mud, in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, could hardly be more impressive.