ORCHARD LAKE — If you can’t go to Poland for World Youth Day, Orchard Lake, Michigan, might be the next best thing.

As hundreds of pilgrims from the Archdiocese of Detroit celebrated their faith on an international scale in Krakow, 130 more celebrated in solidarity July 30-31 on the campus of the Orchard Lake Schools, widely renown as the home of Polonia in the United States.

The “World Youth Day at home” event drew pilgrims from 19 parishes, including from as far away as Cleveland and Lansing, who took part in a variety of activities designed to mirror the international experience.

“Not every young person is able to go to the international World Youth Day, partly because of cost or timing or circumstance, but we want to have as many people globally participating in World Youth Day as possible,” said Michael Chamberland, regional coordinator of youth ministry for the Archdiocese of Detroit. “Really the idea behind this is to have young people locally in solidarity with those abroad in Krakow right now.”

Part of that solidarity included a pilgrimage walk through the campus, the chance to view an exhibit of Eucharistic miracles and to see the room where the future Pope St. John Paul II, patron of World Youth Day, stayed during his visits to Orchard Lake as a cardinal in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Chamberland said having the event on the same campus where the founder of World Youth Day twice visited was extra special, calling the Orchard Lake Schools a “hidden gem,” with pilgrims having the chance to venerate a first-class relic of the sainted pope and see the kayak he used during his visits.

During a “round-robin” segment, pilgrims learned about ways to help those both locally and abroad, making “blessing bags” for chemotherapy patients and donating shoes for WaterStep, a nonprofit that finances solutions for clean water in third-world countries.

While two of Detroit’s bishops were in Poland for World Youth Day, three others were in Orchard Lake, as Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron and Auxiliary Bishops Michael J. Byrnes and Francis R. Reiss helped celebrate with the local pilgrims.

Celebrating a vigil Mass inside the Shrine Chapel of Our Lady of Orchard Lake, the archbishop urged young people to view the choices they face regarding education, jobs and relationships not as “vanity,” but as a way to live like Jesus.

“In making those choices, remember that the most important thing is to do what God cares about and to do these things because they are the word of God,” Archbishop Vigneron said. “Whether you’re at World Youth Day here or at World Youth Day in Krakow with the Holy Father, this is God’s message for everybody doing World Youth Day: Christ’s deliverance from the vanity of life and inviting us to live our lives with his priorities in order to be able to share in his victory and happiness.”

Stephen Gaedcke, a pilgrim from St. Mary Queen of Creation Parish in New Baltimore, said his favorite part of the experience was a Eucharistic adoration session with Bishop Byrnes, who offered his own testimony of coming to know Christ. Gaedcke said while he would have liked to have been in Poland, the Orchard Lake experience was well worth it.

“It’s so incredible because I really wished I could have went (to Poland), but I didn’t have the opportunity,” Gaedcke said. “I actually have a friend who went, so it’s cool to know that we’re working toward the same goal.”

Destiny Webb, of Holy Family Parish in Inkster, said a keynote talk by youth speaker Mike Patin about the day’s theme, mercy, led her to think about ways young people can be conduits of the Gospels for others.

“I learned that even if you are sorry for whatever you’ve done and gone to church to say that you’re sorry, it’s nice to know that you actually are sorry for yourself and you’re acting on it,” Webb said. “I really came here just to be with other kids and see what they thought church and being Catholic was all about.”