SOME CALL it a "Woodstock for young believers", while it bills itself as south Mayo's "Oxygen" (sic) for young Catholics.
"We may not have Oxegen's mud, and we may not have its numbers - but we have our faith to offer, and the Monsignor rocks!" Ann Lee, director of Knock's youth ministry, quipped yesterday, as her organising committee prepared to open this year's Knock Summer Youth Festival.
Charismatic music group Elation Ministries, songwriter and music producer Ronan Johnston and Jesuit theologian Fr Michael Paul Gallagher are among participants booked for this year's event, which is expected to attract between 500 and 1,000 young people from all over Ireland.
Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam and Bishop Donal McKeown, auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor, are also contributing, and a new development this year is formal liaison with the Roman Catholic dioceses throughout the island.
Bearing sleeping bags and rucksacks, several dozen were already arriving into Knock shrine by bus and coach yesterday evening, where accommodation on mats in marquees was on offer.
Not that there would be much time for sleep - the first of three all-night adorations of the Blessed Sacrament was due to begin after the formal opening, Msgr Joseph Quinn of Knock shrine explained.
"This is our mini-Sydney," he said, referring to the pope's visit to Australia this month . "Young people over 18 don't come here for fun of course. They come to pray and to contemplate, and it is very enriching."
Mayo woman Helen Toner came for the first time last year and found it "absolutely brilliant", to the extent that she is now on the organising committee.
Ann Lee was a founder, having been inspired by a retreat she attended near Athenry, Co Galway, after her father's death.
Fr Michael Paul Gallagher, theologian at the Gregorian University in Rome, spoke last night of the "ambiguous power" of new culture on the imagination, and the response to Ireland's rapid transition from modernity to post-modernity.
"As WB Yeats said, the 'unity of culture fragments' in a society where there is a lack of anchoring. We can look at this whole new scene and react in an aggressive way, we can sulk, or, as Shakespeare's Hamlet said, "readiness is all" and we can respond with generosity and with our own disposition," he said.
Participating with Fr Gallagher last night and today is a Czech Jesuit student Petr Vacik, who was reared as an atheist and was baptised at the age of 18.
Guesthouse owner Elsie Tully of the Divine Mercy BB said the event was run by young people for young people and was "brilliant". She didn't tend to get booked out as most of those who arrived stayed in the hall or marquees.
"They like us to keep a bit of a distance, but I sneak down for the reconciliation and healing service on the Saturday night and the atmosphere is just extraordinary," Ms Tully said.
Several young people who had travelled from Dublin and were reluctant to give their names said that they intended to "climb the Reek" on Sunday, when the annual Croagh Patrick pilgrimage takes place - with Mass televised from the summit for the first time.
"I did it myself one year, barefoot, because Clare was playing in the Munster final," Ann Lee admitted. "And they won! But if you put that in the paper, I'll have the Clare manager at me to run up and down the Reek like a mountain goat."
The event runs until July 27th.
