[2] Youth2000 was started in response to Pope John Paul II's invitation to the youth to take an active part in the Decade of Evangelization leading up to the Great Jubilee Year 2000.

In his address at World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostella in Spain in 1989, Pope John Paul II asked young people to evangelize each other by coming together, learning about and experiencing the love of God, saying: "It is up to you young people that the task first falls of bearing witness to the faith and bringing into the Third Millennium the Gospel of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life".

In the UK the main event is the annual Youth 2000 Prayer Festival, which takes place at the Walsingham Catholic Shrine in Norfolk over five days covering the August Bank Holiday weekend.

In 2006, members of a Youth 2000 Retreat organised by Fr Kevin Knox-Lecky, the Catholic Priest of St Mary's church, Glastonbury, were cautioned by police for throwing salt and shouting at local pagans.

Fr Knox-Lecky said that the poor behaviour witnessed by the Pagan Community had come from a small, militant "fringe group" that "attached" itself to the Youth 2000 retreat in Glastonbury.