The unique statue of Our Girl of Fatima will make a uncommon journey from its shrine in Portugal to Rome in October for a Jubilee celebration of Marian spirituality. Supply: CNS.
The statue shall be current in St Peter’s Sq. on October 12 for the closing Mass of the Jubilee of Marian Spirituality, the Vatican has introduced.
The statue has embedded in its crown one of many bullets from the tried assassination of St John Paul II in 1981.
A Turkish gunman shot the pope on Could 13, the feast of Our Girl of Fatima, and the Polish pope credited her with saving his life. He travelled to Fatima the subsequent yr to supply his thanks in individual.
The Marian jubilee will provide pilgrims the prospect to cross the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica and partake in a prayer vigil on the Basilica of St Mary Main in Rome – thought of the oldest Marian shrine within the West
In line with Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation, the statue’s go to will permit the trustworthy to “expertise the closeness of the Virgin Mary” in a particular means. Quoting Pope Francis’ Jubilee Bull of Indiction, “Spes non confundit” (“Hope doesn’t disappoint”), he recalled how Mary is honored as “probably the most affectionate of moms, who by no means abandons her kids.”
The Jubilee shall be solely the fourth time the statue has left the Shrine of Our Girl of Fatima for Rome. The primary event was in 1984 when St John Paul II consecrated the world to the Immaculate Coronary heart of Mary. It returned through the Holy Yr 2000 and once more in 2013 for the Yr of Religion, which marked 50 years for the reason that opening of the Second Vatican Council.
Carved in 1920 from Brazilian cedar by Portuguese sculptor José Ferreira Thedim, the 104-centimeter-tall statue was crafted primarily based on descriptions from the three shepherd kids who claimed to witness the Marian apparitions in 1917. It was solemnly topped in 1946.
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Fatima statue to visit Rome for Jubilee of Marian Spirituality (By Justin McLellan, CNS)
