NZ Catholics invited to get up early to join world-wide holy hour

Friday, May 31st, 2013

On Sunday June 2 at 5pm, in Rome, Pope Francis will be presiding over a holy hour in St Peter’s, and the invitation has gone out for Catholics all over the world to join him in prayer.

For Kiwis, it is a big call because 5pm Sunday in Rome translates in to 3am Monday June 3 in New Zealand. In Wellington, Archbishop Dew has invited people to join him in a holy hour at the Cathedral in Wellington at beginning at 3am.

In Christchurch they are taking a softer option. There will be an Hour of Adoration on Sunday 2 June, at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Manchester St, beginning at 4.00pm, which will include the Evening Prayer of the Church. In Auckland people are invited to St Benedict’s Church at 7pm for adoration, praise and worship and Benediction.

The Vatican has organised this global hour of prayer around the Eucharist “for the first time in the history of the church,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, the office organising events for the Year of Faith.

Archbishop Fisichella said the worldwide adoration would “witness to the profound piety found in the church for the Eucharist,” the mystery of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood, which unites and nourishes all Catholics.

While dioceses are free to organize the hour of prayer and adoration as they please, he said Pope Francis has chosen a specific prayer intention for each half hour of the service. The first, Archbishop Fisichella said, will be for the church and its mission of mercy; the second for the needs of those who suffer, including victims of war, the unemployed, the sick, immigrants and prisoners.

As of May 28, the New Evangelization council had received responses from hundreds of dioceses worldwide, including all of those in Vietnam and South Korea.

The list is a virtual tour of the globe, stretching from Reykjavik, Iceland in the north, to dioceses in South Africa, Chile and New Zealand in the south.

Christ will also be adored in the Eucharist in the Cook Islands, Samoa, Honolulu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Guam.

Other countries with a large number of parishes or dioceses participating are: the United States with 243, India with 163, Brazil with 56, and Italy with 50.

Source