At the end of the national youth pastoral council that took place in Aveiro last weekend, the Director of the National Youth Pastoral Department, Pedro Carvalho, stated that the Portuguese delegation taking part in the Youth Pilgrimage to Rome next summer for the Jubilee of hope “will be a pleasant surprise”, and he considers himself “very pleased with the work done in the dioceses, movements and congregations” of the Lusitanian country. “We will have a pleasant surprise, because I am seeing quite a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of mobilisation in the dioceses, and every time I talk to someone they tell me that they are having more and more people registering; on March 31st, we will announce how many Portuguese young people will go to Rome but we have already exceeded several thousands”, Carvalho went on. To celebrate the Jubilee Pilgrimage, the national youth pastoral department intends to give prominence to sustainability and environmental education too. One of the ideas that come out of the latest national youth pastoral council was to give nature back “the CO2 footprint that will be produced by buses and airplanes for the pilgrimage to Rome”; that’s why – Director Carvalho said – “we are starting a project to plant trees as well as opening some small ecosystems where there are none yet”.