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A religious congregation of blind sisters contemplates the face of Christ

December 6, 2019 CNA Daily News 4

Turin, Italy, Dec 6, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- In Turin, Italy, the Daughters of Jesus the King is a religious community of  blind and visually impaired sisters who aim for holiness, and to be a sign that in Christ, there are no barriers that cannot be overcome.

Sister Lorena Logrono, superior of the Daughters of Jesus the King, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, that the origin of the congregation traces back to the Poor Daughters of Saint Cajetan, which was founded by Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo 135 years ago.

“When Blessed Giovanni Maria Boccardo became ill, he left the Congregation of the Poor Daughters of Saint Cajetan  in the hands of his brother Luigi, who was also appointed head of the institutes for blind girls in Turin,” she explained.

“There a young woman asked Fr. Boccardo about becoming a religious, but she couldn’t be admitted because she was blind. Some time later, he received the inspiration to found a congregation for blind people, which would have the charism of the Poor Daughters of Saint Cajetan but be dedicated to contemplation.”

“And then, in 1932, the contemplative branch, the Daughters of Jesus the King, began,” the sister said.

Sister Lorena, who does see, belongs to the Congregation of the Poor Daughters of Saint Cajetan and is the superior of the Daughters of Jesus the King in Turin, Italy.  

“The Daughters of Jesus the King have always had the assistance of a sister who does see, more for practical matters like, when they have to go to see the doctor, but inside the convent everything is adapted and they are completely independent,” Logrono said.

There are eight members of the Daughters of Jesus the King, and they are between 38 and 100 years of age.

Sister Maria Patrizia Speculato, 69 entered the congregation at 21.

“I had studied physical therapy in Florence at the institute for the blind and there I got to know the congregation. I had felt since I was a little girl the Lord’s call and although I pulled back from that for a while, when I finished studying I saw that the Lord was calling me again. And the desire to consecrate myself to Him rose up again. That enabled me to overcome all of the difficulties for entering, such as leaving my family which is from Naples and go to live in Turin. When you have a vocation you do everything necessary to follow it,” she told ACI Prensa.

Sister Maria Patrizia explained that her charism is to “offer the life of prayer and sacrifice for the Holy Father, for the priests and their sanctification, and for preserving and spreading the faith.”

They pray the complete Liturgy of the Hours because they have it translated into Braille, as well as many other books on spirituality. They also do an hour of Euchastic Adoration every day; they meditate an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the afternoon; they pray the rosary after Holy Mass.

“Our life is to grow in intimacy with Christ,” Sister Maria Patrizia explained.

 

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

 

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Spanish cardinal: Prospect of left-wing coalition government a ‘serious emergency’

December 3, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Valencia, Spain, Dec 3, 2019 / 05:49 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera of Valencia wrote Saturday that in the wake of an inconclusive general election, a pre-agreement between Spain’s prominent socialist and left-wing populist parties could have grievious cultural repercussions.

Spain held a general election Nov. 10, the second of the year. Prime minister Pedro Sanchez’ Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party won 120 seats, while 176 is required for a majority in the Congress of Deputies.

Behind PSOE, the right-wing People’s Party and Vox won 88 and 52 seats, respectively. Podemos, an anti-capitalist and populist party, took 35 seats.

PSOE and Podemos recently announced a pre-agreement for a coalition government, though they would still be 21 seats short of a majority.

“The effective economic repercussions have been immediate, the reactions and commentaries in Europe and Spain, besides being negative, leaves us in great fear,” Cañizares wrote Nov. 30 of the pre-agreement.

The cardinal also warned that the ten points of this pre-agreement have “some cultural, anthropological connotations and a vision of reality that go beyond economics and leave or create great concern.”

With the pre-agreement, he said, “a cultural change is established or engendered, one way of thinking is imposed, with a vision of man intended to be spread to everyone, the approval of euthanasia, the extension of new rights, gender ideology, radical feminism, bringing up historical memories that foment hatred and aversion.”

Cañizares said that the issues present in the pre-agreement “suggest and foresee a deepening and immersion into a very deep crisis above all cultural, but also a political and institutional, a democratic, social, religious crisis about what constitutes Spain in its reality and its very own identity.”

He also explained that there is renewed talk of the possibility of a new worldwide economic crisis, “but even more serious will be the cultural and identity crisis, suffered by Spain in the context of the West, with its own connotations, which, if this coalition takes over the national government given what is seen in the ‘pre-agreement,’ will deepen.”

The archbishop of Valencia recalled that we are “immersed in a human crisis that is deep and getting bigger”, which is in his view “the most serious of all because it’s a crisis of the truth about man and about society,” and which is “the crisis of the meaning of life, a human, anthropological, moral crisis and of universal values, a spiritual and social crisis, a crisis in marriages and families.”

And so he said that “we find ourselves facing a serious emergency, Spain’s emergency,” since “a new culture is being or has been imposed, a project of humanity that entails a  radical anthropological vision which changes the vision that gives us identity and configures us as a people, and even as a continent, I dare to say: the identity received from our ancestors in our common history.”

This would lead to “the serious loss of or almost totally obscure the meaning of the person and his dignity” and ultimately to “abandoning and forgetting God which is to forget and negate man.”

He also said that Spanish society is suffering from “a real sickness, manifested on different fronts, in our society, whose great challenge, or rather, great and new challenges, are summed up in its urgent healing.”

And so the cardinal stressed that “the human person and his dignity, the basis of the common good founded on the real effective recognition of universal human rights, are the foundation that we must contemplate and put in all its consistency, if we want to find the healing and constructive path to follow”.

The cardinal described as “fundamental and urgent” the common commitment to put “the human person and his inviolable dignity and the common good, its essential truth in itself which makes us free for the world of culture, religion and science, of politics and human relationships.”

This would be an “broad basis” to “follow and build upon” with the goal of “reaching and enjoying and new and hopeful future, a new culture and a new civilization which all of us have to shape through dialogue, encounter, without impositions.”

The PSOE-Podemos coalition is seeking the support of the Republican Left of Catalonia, a social-democratic party that focuses on Catalan independence.

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