Czestochowa, Poland, Jul 21, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- There are 900 priests and almost 100 seminarians in the Archdiocese of Czestochowa. But the people of this Polish diocese are praying that more young men will answer a call to the priesthood. This summer, their priests have taken those prayers to the streets.
“The prayer of priestly hearts and feet for vocations” is a prayer pilgrimage chain- a kind of pilgrimage relay- through the parishes of the archdiocese, begun on July 16, and concluding August 20. Each day of the pilgrimage chain, priests from one deanery, or region, of the archdiocese will walk from parish to parish, while praying the rosary and fasting for vocations to the priests.
Each day’s journey is a walk of between 12 and 25 miles, according to the archdiocese, during which a priest carries a wooden cross inscribed “Jesus, I am looking for you,” along with relics of Pope St. John Paul II or St. Therese of the Child Jesus.
Lay Catholics have joined those priests who have already completed a day’s journey, walking along between towns and joining in the recitation of the rosary.
Bishop Andrzej Prsvbylski, an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese, spent July 19 walking and praying for vocations.
“This is a humble pilgrimage for vocations,” the bishop said. “We want to go from Church to Church and pray for vocations.”
The image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, also called the “Black Madonna,” is greatly revered by Poles and is a pilgrimage site for Catholics from across Europe.
In 1717, Our Lady of Czestochowa was crowned Queen and Protector of Poland by Clement XI.
Archbishop Waclaw Depo of Czestochowa has offered a daily blessing to the pilgrimage, according to the archdiocese.
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Rome, Italy, Feb 19, 2019 / 11:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Superiors general of men’s and women’s religious communities expressed sorrow Tuesday for sexual abuse committed within religious congregations and orders ahead of a Vatican meeting on … […]
Mother Elvira, the founder of the Comunità Cenacolo, based her efforts to help young people struggling with addiction around the concept of radical trust in God’s mercy and providence. / Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
National Catholic Register, Aug 5, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Mother Elvira Petrozzi, who founded Comunità Cenacolo in 1983 to provide hope and healing to those suffering from addiction, died on Aug. 3 in the formation house and residence of her congregation in Saluzzo, Italy. She was 86.
Her death, following a long illness, came just weeks after thousands of people gathered in Saluzzo, a hilltop town in Italy’s northwest Piedmont region about an hour’s drive south of Turin, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cenacolo Community’s founding there in an abandoned home on July 16, 1983.
In the decades since, the community has grown to encompass 72 Cenacolo houses in 20 countries, including four in the United States.
Mother Elvira called the Cenacolo a “School of Life” because it took people off the streets and gave them a “rebirth” that was “based on a simple, family-oriented, orderly life” with the foundation of prayer, physical labor, discipline, and fraternal sharing.
“How could I invent a story like this? Everything happened without me even realizing it,” she once remarked.
“I dove into God’s mercy and I rolled up my sleeves to love, love, love … and serve!” she said. “I am the first to surprise myself with what has happened and what is happening in the life of the Cenacolo Community. It’s a work of God, the Holy Spirit, and of Mary.”
Bishop Robert Baker, bishop emeritus of Birmingham, Alabama, first met Mother Elvira in 1991. The two developed a close friendship and together they co-founded four Comunità Cenacolos in the U.S. Southwest, including one near Hanceville, Alabama.
Baker was among Mother Elvira’s many friends, supporters, and community members who were able to visit with her in her final days.
“I had the blessing of being invited to come to be at her bedside,” he told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s partner news outlet. “I was with her and I was able to give her a blessing.”
Humble beginnings
Born Rita Petrozzi, Mother Elvira was born in Sora, Italy, in 1937 and grew up in a poor family, taking the name Elvira upon entering the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide Thouret as a teenager.
It wasn’t until 27 years later that she felt inspired to help young addicts and other youth to change their lives. Rooted in her Catholic faith and God’s love for every person, her methods were so effective that they led to others wanting a Comunità Cenacolo established in their region.
Prior to meeting her, Baker founded a drug addiction center called Our Lady of Hope Community in St. Augustine, Florida. Then visiting Rome when he was rector of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, he learned of Mother Elvira, spoke with her, and at his invitation agreed to establish a Cenacolo community with her entire program at Our Lady of Hope in 1992. The two friends went on to co-found two other houses in the St. Augustine area and a fourth house in Alabama.
Baker celebrated one of the Masses for the thousands of people attending the 40th anniversary celebration in Saluzzo. In his homily, he reflected on the time when he arranged to use an ornamental nursery to raise funds for the Cenacolo program in Florida, but when community members arrived from Italy they explained that Mother Elvira had instructed them to rely instead on divine providence.
“It was the result of her own closeness to the Lord in the Eucharist, which enabled her to see the immensity of God’s love. And if God loves us so immensely, he will provide for us,” he said.
After 30 years, no one has gone hungry in that Florida house or any of the community’s houses. “The point being, she was right,” Baker said.
Mother Elvira, who died on Aug. 3, 2023, at age 86, was beloved for her infectious trust in God’s providence, her devotion to the Eucharist, and her burning desire to share God’s boundless love with those struggling in life. Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
The daily schedule at these houses includes Mass, eucharistic adoration, Marian devotion with three rosaries minimum a day, and devotion to St. Joseph. Every day members pray simply: “St. Joseph, provide for us.”
“The heart of it is, of course, the Eucharist,” Baker explained.
“Part of Elvira’s training is to divest to get rid of the stuff you don’t need,” he said. “So, the divesting, the trust in divine providence, and then … the Eucharist, praying before the Lord. That’s where her greatest strength was — the Eucharist, where she had all these insights. [You] have to have the sense of God’s immense love, which she had from praying before the Eucharist. And then because you know God loves you immensely, he will provide for you.”
When Baker visited Mother Elvira shortly before her death, he noted upon entering the house a mosaic on the floor that spells out the words “Dio Provvede” (God Provides).
‘Consumed with God’s love’
Florida residents Sean and Elaine Corrigan, who met Mother Elvira in 2000, lived in her community for some time and served in its missions in Brazil.
The couple credits her for saving their marriage.
“She had an extraordinary impact on our lives and on our marriage,” Elaine Corrigan told the Register. “Mother Elvira was a person fully in love with her Savior. She knew, she accepted, and she believed completely in his merciful love, and her great desire was to share him with others.
“I wanted to run after her and soak up all that she had,” she continued. “When we met Mother Elvira, we knew we had encountered a woman completely consumed with the love of God. She knew in the core of her being that he could and would heal people. She shared this hope and mercy with everyone she met.”
Albino Aragno, who started with the Cenacolo more than 30 years ago and today is the director of Comunità Cenacolo America, said Mother Elvira taught him many valuable lessons.
“Mother Elvira always encouraged me. She reminded me that life is precious and that life needs to be lived fully … to never be afraid to do God’s will, and always trust in him,” he said.
“Because of this, I can say that in all these years I can see that our community has kept on going even through so many difficulties, because good always prevails!”
Albino’s wife, Joyce, said Mother Elvira had a profound effect on her from the very beginning.
“Mother Elvira said, ‘Lord, let me know your will in the moment you want me to do it.’ This pierced my heart the first time I heard it and moved me to try to live every moment of my life in surrender and abandonment to his will, as Jesus reveals it at that moment,” she explained.
“It’s so radically opposed to control and trusting ‘in my own understanding,’ as the Psalmist says — my own intellect, perception, and analysis. Jesus calls me to live totally in the moment, not depending on myself.”
Pope Francis paid tribute to the Comunità Cenacolo on its 40th anniversary following his July 16 Angelus reflection.
“I send my heartfelt greeting to the Cenacolo Community, which has been a place of hospitality and human promotion for 40 years,” the pope said. “I bless Mother Elvira, the bishop of Saluzzo, and all the fraternity and friends. What you do is good, and it is good that you exist! Thank you!”
Baker said he observed during a recent Mass how “in periods of the Church there are great saints that get us through the eras in which we live.”
He pointed to St. Benedict in the fourth century, the Dominicans and Franciscans in the 13th century during the Albigensian heresy, and St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in the 16th century at the time of the Reformation.
Archbishop Domenico Battaglia holds up the reliquary with the liquefied blood of St. Januarius on the martyr bishop’s feast day Sept. 19, 2023. The announcement that the blood had liquefied was made at the start of Mass in the Naples Cathedral by Abbot Vincenzo De Gregorio. / Screenshot / YouTube channel Chiesa di Napoli
Rome Newsroom, Sep 19, 2023 / 06:10 am (CNA).
The blood of the martyr St. Januarius again liquefied in Naples on Tuesday.
“We have just taken from the safe the reliquary with the blood of our patron saint, which immediately completely liquefied,” the abbot of the chapel of the treasury of the Naples Cathedral announced on Sept. 19.
The declaration that the miracle had again taken place was made at the start of Mass by Abbot Vincenzo De Gregorio.
The archbishop of Naples, Domenico Battaglia, held the relic of the blood, moving the glass ampoules to demonstrate the liquid state of the blood to the sounds of strong applause, while the deputy of the wisdom of the people waved a white cloth.
On Sept. 19, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Januarius, bishop, martyr, and patron saint of Naples, Italy. Traditionally, on this day and on two other occasions a year, his blood, which is kept in a glass ampoule in the shape of a rounded cruet, liquifies.
It is believed the miracle has taken place since at least 1389, the first instance on record.
The liquefaction process sometimes takes hours or even days, and sometimes it does not happen at all. In local lore, the failure of the blood to liquefy signals war, famine, disease, or other disaster.
At Mass Sept. 19, Archbishop Battaglia of Naples, spoke about the miracle and what it is and is not.
“Every year we see first-hand how the witness of a man who generously gave his life for the Gospel, until his last breath, until his last drop of blood, is not something of the past, a historic event useful only to write about in some pages of a book,” he said.
“No,” Battaglia continued, “it’s a testimony that is present, living, current, and capable of speaking to the heart of every believer, pushing him to more consistency, beyond courage, to a life of giving, steeped in sharing.”
He reminded those present that the blood of St. Januarius “is not an oracle to consult and even less a city horoscope whose function is to predict misfortune or fortune for the city. No, the relic we bless is simply a road sign, a finger that points us to the necessity, the urgency, the requirement to follow the Gospel in a radical way, being unreservedly attracted by its liberating beauty, listening with an open heart and mind to its word of life and hope.”
Battaglia said the blood of St. Januarius makes him think of the unjust bloodshed that happens every day “whenever a person is wounded, humiliated, not respected in his dignity.”
“I believe that the real miracle will take place the day this blood [of St. Januarius] is forever hard, compact, clotted!” the archbishop said. ”Yes, I believe that the real miracle will happen when justice kisses peace, when good overpowers evil forever, when the good news of Jesus Christ dries up the pain of the world, illuminates the darkness for good, brings all things to completion, enters so deeply into the hearts of men and women that their words, their deeds, their thoughts will be nothing but goodness, benevolence, beauty.”
After the Mass, the relic of St. Januarius’ blood will remain on display for veneration in the Cathedral of Naples until Sept. 26 in thanksgiving for the miracle.
The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are not enough. May the Lord of the harvest call many zealous laborers to his vineyard.