325 teens pack gym for YOUTH 2000
March 25, 2025
About 325 middle school and high school youth gathered to spend time with Jesus and deepen their relationship with him during a YOUTH 2000 retreat.
Through adoration, inspiring talks from Franciscan friars, Mass, and prayer, the youth turned their attention to what’s working in their lives and to areas where they need God’s help.
The retreat, held Feb. 21-23 at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in West Des Moines, returned after a several-year absence.
Deacon Kelly and Maureen Stone remember driving their kids to the Twin Cities for a YOUTH 2000 retreat years ago.
It came to Boone, Iowa in 2000, then the Diocese of Des Moines, they said.
“It always kept its Eucharistic focus,” said Maureen Stone, of St. John the Apostle Parish in Norwalk.
Last summer, she and her husband, Deacon Kelly Stone, were talking with Deacon Eric and Monica Pugh and John and Jane Gaffney about how nice it would be if that retreat made a comeback in the Diocese.
At the National Eucharistic Congress last summer in Indianapolis, they visited with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal at a booth, and upon returning home, they began planning to bring back YOUTH 2000.
“We were thinking YOUTH 2000 is absolutely Eucharistic-focused and it can be right here in the Des Moines area,” said Deacon Stone.
The "burning bush" is a staple to the YOUTH 2000 event. It stays in the center of the gym and all the youth are set up in a circle around it, with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament exposed during the entire weekend retreat.
Joseph Stone, of St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, said the experience was unforgettable.
“During YOUTH 2000 something amazing happened. Before their Eucharistic healing procession, the sisters asked everyone to find one thing that they wanted to ask Jesus for or ask healing from when the Eucharist was exposed. I took a moment and searched my own heart trying to find what I needed from Jesus and then I found it,” he said.
“The procession started and as the Eucharist got closer to me I suddenly realized in that moment just how much I was loved. I could feel God’s love surrounding me.”
Another key event is the international rosary, seen being prayed here by over 300 youth and their chaperones.
Joseph O’Meara, of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianola, would recommend YOUTH 2000 to anyone in high school.
“All the kids at the orphanage (in Uganda, where he used to live) hoped that one day they would get adopted, and so did I. I thought it would just be a new family, but it was more than that. It was a new life, a new way of living. Especially now that I’m Catholic,” he said.
“I was adopted into a new family but then adopted again into God’s universal family when I was baptized. I can appreciate my faith in a special way because I remember a time when I didn’t have it, a time when I didn’t have much at all for that matter.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story listed all participants as high schoolers. YOUTH 2000 was open to both middle school and high school youth, with participants ranging in age from grades 6 to 12.