This is a SEAC Online special feature. These videos were uploaded each day from the World Youth Day pilgrimage that took place in August. 160 Alaskans attended World Youth Day, including 32 from Southeast Alaska. All videos were produced by John Amoratis. Special thanks to Bishop Burns for envisioning this daily blogging and to Karla Donaghey, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Juneau, for facilitating the iPad 2 which was the means of recording and producing these multimedia blog posts. Also, thanks to Archbishop Schwietz, Bob McMorrow, Theresa Austin, and others from Anchorage who spearheaded this pilgrimage for all Alaskans.
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Intro
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Day 1 – Frankfurt
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Day 2 – Lourdes
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Day 3 – Lourdes
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Day 4 – Barcelona
Extra: Barcelona Intro
Extra: Barcelona Fountain Show
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Day 5 – Barcelona
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Day 6 – Zaragoza
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Day 7 – Toledo
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Day 8 – Avila
Bishop Burns Avila Homily
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Day 9 – Madrid
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Day 10 – Catechesis
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Day 11 – Welcoming the Pope to Madrid
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Day 12 – Bishop Burns WYD Catechesis in Madrid Arena
To see the question and answer videos from this catechesis session, click here.
To hear a high quality audio version of the catechesis, click here.
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World Youth Day Sunday Mass
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How the Videos Were Made
by John Amoratis
In the Communications Office of the Diocese of Juneau, there is a constant effort to embrace newer and more effective methods of reaching the faithful with news about their church. Karla Donaghey is the Director of the Office of Communications. Encouraged by Bishop Burns in her efforts to expand the use of technology in the chancery, Karla never sits still. Even though I am the Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, I also have a wide set of technology skills which means that I find myself working with many different offices in the chancery and throughout the diocese on technological projects. One office stands above all the rest when it comes to embracing new technology: the Office of Communications.
As Director of the Office of Communications, Karla is always antsy to find out more ways to reach people with the news. As a tech guy, I am used to slowly convincing people to try something new with technology, but with Karla, I have finally met a person with her own big list of tech ideas. She just wants to know how each and every one of them can be implemented. This is a joy. Still, Karla and I were both surprised when Bishop Burns commissioned a World Youth Day blogging project. Turns out that he leapfrogged us both. We should not have been surprised. Bishop Burns is the award winning Executive Director of the film Fishers of Men, for which he received the Gabriel Award. He knows about the power of the New Evangelization. Once the bishop provided the impetus for a World Youth Day blogging project using our new-media online edition of the diocesan newspaper, Karla and I found ourselves in a brainstorming session where the iPad 2 quickly became apparent as the tool which could handle the job of recording and producing multimedia blog posts for this project. The built in camera and internet capabilities of the iPad 2 along with iMovie at $4.99 and the free WordPress app for iPad were the tools needed to make these videos possible.
iMovie allowed each day’s raw footage to be spruced up with cross-dissolves, titles, and voice overs. The WordPress app piped the finished products onto our blog as new posts. On the backend of the blog, we upgraded our Diocesan WordPress account to handle video clips. This particular assembly of hardware, software, and internet services was ideal because it effectively enabled me to produce a big “punch” in video production quality even though the blogging was only a secondary part of my duties on the pilgrimage. Mainly, I was on the pilgrimage as youth minister to be present to the pilgrims who were right there on the bus. This included such tasks as giving an impromptu talk over the internal PA system of the bus to explain a bit about the various titles of the Blessed Mother, counting heads to make sure no pilgrims were left behind at each stop of the bus, and escorting fatigued pilgrims back to the hotel where they could safely escape the excessive 100 degree heat of the World Youth Day festivities. Secondarily, as youth minister, I wanted to use these videos to reach out to the youth and young adults who were still back in Alaska. Thanks to the iPad, iMovie, and WordPress, I was able to fully concentrate on being present to the pilgrims on the bus while also managing to regularly post these videos for the youth and young adults who were still back in Southeast Alaska. All of this great technology enabled me to make these videos in spare moments throughout the pilgrimage. I did most of the editing during the many hours of bus riding we endured each day. Each night as we arrived at the various hotels which hosted us, I was usually able to find WIFI access and upload the videos. Back in Juneau, Karla eyeballed the posts for quality assurance and then set the status of the posts from ‘draft’ to ‘published.’
Hopefully, this will be the first of many next-generation outreaches to be brought to you by the Diocese of Juneau. Pope John Paul the Great encouraged a new evangelization to bring the Gospel to modern man and this new technology is helping our technologically advanced Diocese to do just that.
The Inside Passage 