Youth Centre an expression of how Pope treasured the young

THE International Youth Centre founded by Pope John Paul II in the shadow of St Peter's has a few bare spots on its walls that a quarter of a million Irish people could help fill.

Among the photographic records it displays are scenes from youth gatherings all over the world which John Paul attended.

But the collection is only as old as the centre, which opened in 1983, and there are no images from a wet racecourse in Ballybrit, Galway, where 250,000 young Irish people came to see the Pope five years before.