“The initiative proposes to reawaken enthusiasm for our faith in the gift of God and to give new zeal to the promotion of vocations,” organizers said.
According to a press release: “Bishops, clergy, laypeople and religious will meet for a moment of reflection and study on the relations between ordained ministers, and lay and religious members, with a view to harmonizing their contribution, which will be articulated and in line with the call to holiness addressed to each one.”
The three-day symposium will begin with an introduction from Pope Francis on faith and the priesthood today.
Around 500 priests, bishops, religious, and other Catholics are expected to attend.
The sessions will be chaired by the heads of dicasteries in the Roman Curia, while Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican’s Christian unity council, will also be a featured speaker.
Theologians and other Catholic experts will present on topics including the Fathers of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, priestly celibacy, the pastoral challenges of the priesthood, vocational formation, and the complementarity of the different states of life.
A roundtable on women and ministry will take place on the second day, Feb. 18.
The symposium on vocations will be one of the first Vatican conferences to be held in-person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cardinal Ouellet told Vatican News on Wednesday that the conference will address the “fundamental priesthood of the baptized and the ministerial priesthood.”
“Usually, when we think of priesthood we think of the priests and bishops and so on, but the fundamental priesthood is the priesthood of the baptized: we are part of the Body of Christ and as such, we participate in the mediation of the Church, the participation of the Church in the Priesthood of Christ,” he said.
Ouellet also explained that while priestly celibacy will be a topic at the symposium, it is not within the conference’s scope “to decide whether we will keep obligatory celibacy or not.”
Other speakers at the event will include French theologian and Dominican priest Father Serge-Thomas Bonino, German biblical scholar Robert Vorholt, Italian theologian Father Piero Coda, and French theologian and religious Sister Alexandra Diriart.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, will give the closing presentation on the topic of the priesthood and mission.
Each day of the symposium will include an opportunity to attend Mass.
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Patrick Norton stands near Sister Annella Zervas’ grave, October 2022. / Credit: Patti Armstrong
St. Paul, Minn., Dec 10, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pointing toward the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at the Saint Benedict Monastery cemetery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, 61-year-old Patrick Norton recounts the day 13 years ago when he was painting light posts in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and encountered who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas, OSB.
Zervas, a Benedictine sister, died in 1926 at the age of 26 of a debilitating skin disease.
Norton, who was plucked from the streets of Bombay as a child by Mother Teresa and later adopted by an American family, had been hired by the College of Saint Benedict on Oct. 27, 2010, to do some painting. He told CNA that while finishing up the last light post in front of the grotto he thought to himself, “I wonder if the Blessed Mother thinks I am doing a good job?” When he looked down, there was a nun in full Benedictine habit.
“‘You are doing a good job,’ she told me. We talked a little, but I don’t remember what it was about. Then I watched as she disappeared,” he told CNA.
The encounter was so astonishing that Norton kept it to himself for a year. But in a chance conversation, he was told “there is a holy nun buried in that cemetery” and he came to learn it was Zervas. Eventually, he saw a picture of her and was certain that she was the one who had appeared to him.
Patrick Norton stands beside the lamp post he was painting near the Marian grotto when he saw a woman in full Benedict habit who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas. Credit: Patti Armstrong
An elderly religious sister at Saint Benedict Monastery — who also happened to be named Sister Annella — shared with Norton pictures of Zervas and a booklet about the young sister’s life called “Apostles of Suffering in Our Day” by Benedictine priest Joseph Kreuter, published in 1929.
“Why isn’t she a saint yet?’ Norton asked.
“Oh, I’m in my 80s and I’m the only one promoting her cause,” she replied.
“Sister, why can’t I help you out?” he replied.
Norton said she just looked at him. “I didn’t have any experience but felt compassion for her, and also, I did see Sister Annella, so I felt I had to promote her cause.”
He read in the booklet that Zervas entered the convent at age 15 and died from a painful, unsightly, and odiferous skin disease at age 26. She was also subjected to attacks from the devil and from a heartburn that made it hard to keep food down. At the time of her death, she weighed only 40 pounds. Yet, she asked God to allow her even more suffering and for the strength to bear it so she could offer it up for the Church.
Every week, Norton made 10 copies of the booklet to pass out. “I went to Sister Annella’s grave and told her, ‘If I am going to make more books, I need money.’”
A short time later he had a conversation with someone he had just met and told about Zervas. “How can I help?” the person asked him.
“Can you help me make 20 books a week instead of just 10?”
“How about 20,000?” the donor, who wanted to remain anonymous, replied.
The number of books Norton has now distributed is about 100,000. It was also previously published in French and Sri Lanken.
Another good Samaritan arranged for Norton to be interviewed for a video called “The Sanctity of Two Hearts.”
A friend of Norton’s located Joanne Zervas, a niece of Sister Annella’s, and Norton met with her. She gave him many of her aunt’s personal effects for safekeeping, including family letters, a silver spoon used to give holy Communion when Zervas was incapacitated, her rosary, a book stained with what is believed to be her blood, and candles that burned in her room when she died.
Word spread about the sister and there were reports of answered prayers through her intercession. Yet, it seemed unlikely that a cause for her canonization would open.
Norton recounted that Bishop Donald Joseph Kettler of the Diocese of St. Cloud encouraged him to keep telling his story but declined to take further steps in order to respect the wishes of the Benedictine sisters who were not interested in opening a cause for Zervas.
In a SC Times article in 2017, a spokesperson for the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, said it was not the Benedictine way to promote one sister above another as it would “be contrary to humility.” A spokesperson from the diocese said that without their support, there would be no cause.
But Norton and a small group that had formed to pray that her cause be opened met monthly at the cemetery and kept praying.
After years of disappointment, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis informed Norton that he was appealing to the wrong diocese. Zervas had died in her parents’ home in Moorhead, Minnesota, which is in the Crookston Diocese. But again, there was no interest in opening a cause there.
“I went through darkness,” Norton admitted. “I would say, ‘Really Lord, are you hearing me?’ One day I said, ‘I’m not getting any younger you know.’”
Norton questioned if he was even the right person to promote Zervas. “I’m not a doctor or a lawyer; I’m just a painter,” he said. But he had told the Lord: “Let me live each day for you, and I will tell people about her through my nothingness.”
Patrick Norton speaks during event at the grotto in the cemetery during event where the bishop’s letter was read in October 2023. Credit: Patti Armstrong
Then in 2021, Bishop Andrew Cozzens was appointed to the Diocese of Crookston. Norton heard that Cozzens had known about Zervas since he was a boy. Then on Oct. 15 Norton heard — through a letter from the bishop that was read at the cemetery to the prayer group — that initial steps are being put in place by the diocese to begin an investigation into Zervas’ life, which will make it possible for a cause to be opened.
Norton has now been promoting Zervas’ story for more than a decade.
“I couldn’t fall asleep that night,” Norton told CNA. “I was overwhelmed. The first thing I did was to thank Our Lord and Our Lady. Before going to bed, every night, I always kiss the cheek of Our Lady of Fátima statue [in his home] and say, ‘Good night, Mother.’ And I kiss the feet of Our Lord on a big crucifix from a monastery in Spain and say, ‘You are my Lord and my God. There is no other God, and I love you.’”
“Even before Sister Annella appeared to me, every Mother’s Day, I brought roses to the grotto and would tell [Mary], ‘You are the best Ma in the whole world. Happy Mother’s Day, Ma.’ I’d sit there and look at the big crucifix and pray the rosary.”
Norton said he is at peace with his efforts over the years to make Zervas’ life and holiness known. “Since the diocese is taking over, I’m going to just be silent and do my best to live in humility and pray,” he said. “I will pray a lot and thank the Lord for the work he is doing.”
Migrants mostly form Central America wait in line to cross the border at the Gateway International Bridge into the U.S. from Matamoros, Mexico, to Brownsville, Texas, on June 4, 2024. / Credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Pope Francis gives his weekly Angelus address on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 11, 2022 / 08:35 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said Sunday he is concerned about recent deadly clashes in the northern part of South Sudan.“I foll… […]
2 Comments
The endangering “laicization of the clergy and the clericalization of the laity,” a confusion already warned against in the Documents of Vatican II…
Combined with the refreshing but fluid exploratory style of the synodal documents (the Preparatory Document and the Vademecum), this event hopefully clarifies and even restores needed distinctions and responsibilities, earlier rather than later (e.g., complementarity of roles, not confusion; differing in kind as well as degree). The troubling aspect of the current form of synodality is that the “walking together” is translated into the additive politics of simply moving things along—that is, the stages of synthesis (parish, diocesan, continental, and Vatican?) are limited to “aggregated,” “compiled” and “collated feedback” and curious “minority reports.” Crockpot theology!
While the apostolic and hierarchical communion of the Church is briefly reaffirmed, here and there, in the synodal documents, nevertheless, the successors of the apostles are too-much reduced to serving “primarily as facilitators.”
At what points in the synodal process are, yes, the very likely drops of cyanide (e.g., accompaniment/accommodation of the homosexual lifestyle) removed from the composted super-synthesis at the Synod on Synodality in 2022-2023?
Certainly laity should be apostles of the faith. Although when Cardinal Ouellet poses this charisma as a theological rather than pastoral agenda to be explored, then it suggests a confluence of the priesthood of the faithful by baptism, and the ordained appointed by laying on of hands by a bishop.
What occurs when the distinction is blurred is mitigation of the explicit apostolic ministry of the ordained, and, in effect, the priesthood of Christ with which the ordained priesthood identifies. We are to look to Christ crucified both priest and victim as head of the Body and him alone.
The endangering “laicization of the clergy and the clericalization of the laity,” a confusion already warned against in the Documents of Vatican II…
Combined with the refreshing but fluid exploratory style of the synodal documents (the Preparatory Document and the Vademecum), this event hopefully clarifies and even restores needed distinctions and responsibilities, earlier rather than later (e.g., complementarity of roles, not confusion; differing in kind as well as degree). The troubling aspect of the current form of synodality is that the “walking together” is translated into the additive politics of simply moving things along—that is, the stages of synthesis (parish, diocesan, continental, and Vatican?) are limited to “aggregated,” “compiled” and “collated feedback” and curious “minority reports.” Crockpot theology!
While the apostolic and hierarchical communion of the Church is briefly reaffirmed, here and there, in the synodal documents, nevertheless, the successors of the apostles are too-much reduced to serving “primarily as facilitators.”
At what points in the synodal process are, yes, the very likely drops of cyanide (e.g., accompaniment/accommodation of the homosexual lifestyle) removed from the composted super-synthesis at the Synod on Synodality in 2022-2023?
Certainly laity should be apostles of the faith. Although when Cardinal Ouellet poses this charisma as a theological rather than pastoral agenda to be explored, then it suggests a confluence of the priesthood of the faithful by baptism, and the ordained appointed by laying on of hands by a bishop.
What occurs when the distinction is blurred is mitigation of the explicit apostolic ministry of the ordained, and, in effect, the priesthood of Christ with which the ordained priesthood identifies. We are to look to Christ crucified both priest and victim as head of the Body and him alone.