GERMANY’S most successful Catholic youth prayer event inviting strangers to pray in a church is headed for Brisbane next week.
University student movement Freedom will host the first Nightfever, a Eucharistic adoration event inspired by the Collogne World Youth Day in 2005, at St Stephen’s Cathedral on August 21.
Young people will walk through Brisbane city inviting complete strangers to stop and pray inside the Cathedral before they continue on their Friday night agenda.
Freedom missionary Grace Rutty brought the idea to Australia after experiencing Nightfever in Ottawa, Canada while on mission at a local university.
Miss Rutty said the event took people walking through the bustling city “straight to Jesus”.
“Some people might have walked past the Cathedral a thousand times on the way to work but never gone in,” she said.
“Teams of two will be going out inviting people off the street to come and light a candle.”
Miss Rutty said priests would be available for confessions and organisers had created a “conversation corner” for non-Catholic visitors.
She hoped priests and religious from various congregations would attend the event.
Nightfever’s original founders Katharina Fassler and Andreas Süß organised the first prayer evening in Collogne on October 29, 2005.
The event has spread to over 70 countries, including a parish in Sydney.
Brisbane’s debut event will begin with Mass at 6pm, followed by training for volunteers wishing to participate in the event’s outreach component.
