The World Youth Day Murders, The World Youth Day Murders

In the summer of 1993, about 400,000 youth from around the world came to Denver, Colorado to attend World Youth Day. Like a Dead Head Concert, the main attraction for those young people was a 73-year-old spiritual rock star - Pope John Paul II. Years prior to World Youth Day, a number of cults - what the Catholic Church terms "Movements of the Spirit" - began their own magnetic draw on youth all over the world. Hardly known to the vast majority of Catholics, the founders of these cults were every bit as cunning, domineering, and dangerous as Jim Jones, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, and L. Ron Hubbard. The World Youth Day Murders is the story of a young Denver detective and his efforts to track down and stop a serial killer hidden deep within the bowels of a Catholic cult - the Focolare movement which continues to operate today. As in his previous book, The ROMEOs - The Parable of the Prodigal, David Tracy pens this fictional story based upon historical abuses which the Catholic Church chose to, and continues to hide. On a deeper level, Tracy is quick to point out that in many ways, the excesses of these Catholic cults are often mirrored in the more mainstream Catholic Church, and exemplified by the financial and sexual abuses that persist. Whether it be the actions of the mainstream Catholic Church or that of one of its cults, The World Youth Day Murders illustrates what deadly events can happen when good people allow strong personalities to do their thinking for them and what can happen when the Gospel is replaced by the whims of a compromised hierarchy. Once again, in The World Youth Day Murders, David Tracy exhibits a Quentin Tarantino take on the Catholic Church and its "Pulp Fiction" type of cults. Tracy's book is not only entertaining but thought-provoking. It presumes to offer the Catholic bishops, so preoccupied with status, money, and power an opportunity to reflect upon the need for them to reinvent their ministries as guided by the Gospels, and to become true shepherd servants to their flocks. In this, his third book, David Tracy develops a new genre of murder, mystery, and suspense. Written in a style reminiscent of Malachai Martin and Larry McMurtry, Tracy masterfully mixes history with fantasy and moves his characters around like lethal chess pieces.