Some of my right-wing friends called me the Wednesday before the Pope's visit asking me to be a volunteer at the Downsview site for the vigil and the Mass...no cost to me... air conditioned coach... all meals provided. "Why would I want to be a volunteer?" I asked.  "Well, there will be 250 of us, we will clean out the outhouses on the Downsview site, and we will have fun." Well, since the cleaning up of Mother Earth in the Universe is my #1 creative and redemptive priority, I agreed.
We were two bus loads from the Rockland area, and it was fun.  On the trip down I sat beside a born-again charismatic Catholic and we exchanged spiritual ideas about the gamut of Church teachings. We (the whole bus) even prayed the Rosary...it didn't hurt me...I didn't get a hernia...as a matter of fact, I enjoyed it.  I met other good people as we traveled along the way, and we arrived at the site in time for a good catered supper.  We all slept in a huge tent, on army cots. That evening we had a rip-snorting sing-song, slept fitfully, but awoke refreshed.
Our job for Saturday and Sunday was to attend to 6500 VATI-cans, as we called them: filling toilet paper and towels, and water for basins, and directing people away from the filled latrines as we waited for the honey wagons. The conversation and camaraderie were good, and we worked our butts off, 3 hours at a shift.
The Vigil was impressive, with waves of young  pilgrims (350,000) coming together for a spiritual experience and to see the Pope.  Four helicopters announced his arrival and the crowd surged as the Popemobile passed through. The kids danced and sang all night. It was great!
But the Mass was powerful...800,000 strong with the praying and singing and dancing and drums and helicopters, and rain coming down in sheets, and the clerics praying over the loudspeakers (a few Women too!!!).  We could see the stage on big screens and it was good to see the Pope. Our return home on Sunday evening was relaxing. We prayed the Rosary again and, when they handed the mike to me to say a decade in English, I remembered my prayers, even "O Jesus forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to salvation especially those in most need of your mercy."
I almost felt like a born-again Catholic. I felt that maybe the Church wasn't so bad after all, at least that there was a lot of good in these rituals.
Then I read Joan Chittister's article on the Church of Silence, the Church of Exclusion and the Church of Dominance and my heart sank. And then I read Virginia Lafond's email [to Corpus-NCR] on the priest pedophilia crisis from the June 2002 Washington Post, and I reaffirmed once again the difference between spiritual power and Church power; and how many innocents are being destroyed, and how much is being covered up by the hierarchy, and how important it is to ensure that women and men get back their spiritual power, and that justice be restored, and that hierarchical criminals be prosecuted. 
I reflected on my volunteer work as one of the Pope's poopers, and I was glad to have been at the World Youth Day. And I was also glad to have been reminded that the present Church "temple will be torn down, and in three days be reborn".  Amen.