"There is one clear reason for the thousands of devotees who flock to Baclaran: the special Marian piety of the Filipino people," Fr. Joseph Echano, CSsR, rector of the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, told CNA.

"What Baclaran is today is because of the Filipinos' deep devotion to Mary" he added. "Indeed, if Filipinos are sent on mission throughout the world, our special gift in mission will be our love of our blessed Mother Mary… the devotion to Mother Mary is deeply embedded in Filipino culture."

There is a phrase in Spanish about the Filipinos. They are "pueblo amante de Maria," people in love with Mary.

For Fr. Echano, Baclaran is "the quintessential expression of this."

The shrine's rector estimates as many as 100,000 devotees flock to the shrine every Wednesday and there are 80,000 visitors a day every Sunday.

The centuries-old miraculous icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help is enshrined in the National Shrine of Baclaran in Parañaque, part of Metro Manila.

Behind the icon is a special purpose.

"The icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help is not to show a beautiful scene or person but to convey a beautiful spiritual message - the perpetual help and love of God through the intercession of Our Mother of Perpetual Help," Fr. Echano said.

In the year 1866, Blessed Pius IX entrusted the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorist congregation, giving them the mission to make her known throughout the world.

Redemptorist missionaries arrived in the Philippines in 1906, bringing a copy of the icon. They gathered a small group of 70 people for the first novena at a humble wooden church in a fishing village. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Antonio Anup Gonsalves in Catholic News Agency
• Image: xplorra

It being a school night, I wrestled with the decision to bring her, but the promise of good media about the faith outweighed the practical concern of homework completion. She seemed elated that I was allowing her a night off. As we left the house to meet my mom and dad, a spirit of joy and anticipation filled the space between us.

Within minutes of arriving, that joyful spirit had all but disintegrated. Unexpected circumstances sent my daughter descending into a spiral of teenage angst, complete with yelling. Surrounding us were people I knew from church.

I felt sure they were watching our exchange and my inability to control the situation. I felt sure they thought I had no place at a film about the Mother of God when, at present, I was actively earning my title as "Worst Mother Ever."

As the film was about to begin, she took off to find a seat far away from me. I wanted to leave. While stewing in this emotional soup of anxiety, embarrassment and self-doubt, I heard a still, small voice within that told me to stay put.

Due to plain exhaustion, my usually stubborn self listened and stayed. It didn't take long to figure out why I was meant to be there.

The film portrayed the Church, ten years after the resurrection of Christ, standing at a crossroad. The disciples were faced with new challenges and confounding arguments.

All looked to Peter for answers, for leadership and yet he felt he had none to give. With the advent of adolescence in my home, I too felt myself to be at a crossroad. Daily I faced new challenges and confounding arguments. Continue reading

• Lisa Lohenry Gilligan is a wife and mother who has been employed in parish ministry for over 20 years.

In a small Roman Catholic chapel in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the village of Medjugorje, Ivan Dragicevic walks down the aisle, kneels in front of the altar, bows his head for a moment, and then, smiling, lifts his gaze heavenward.

He begins to whisper, listens intently, whispers again, and doesn't blink for ten minutes. His daily conversation with the Virgin Mary has begun.

Dragicevic was one of six poor shepherd children who first reported visions of the Virgin Mary in 1981. She identified herself to the four girls and two boys as the "Queen of Peace" and handed down the first of thousands of messages admonishing the faithful to pray more often and asking sinners to repent.

Dragicevic was 16 years old, and Medjugorje, then in communist-controlled Yugoslavia, had yet to emerge as a hub of miracle cures and spiritual conversions, attracting 30 million pilgrims during the past three decades.

I'm in Medjugorje with a group of Americans, mostly hockey dads from the Boston area, plus two men and two women with stage 4 cancer. We're led by 59-year-old Arthur Boyle, a father of 13, who first came here on Labor Day weekend in 2000, riddled with cancer and given months to live.

He felt broken and dejected and wouldn't have made the trip had not two friends forced him into it. But that first night, after he went to confession at St. James the Apostle church, psychological relief came rapidly.

"The anxiety and depression were gone," he told me. "You know when you're carrying someone on your shoulders in a swimming pool water fight—they come off, and you feel light and free? I was like, Wait a minute, what just happened to me? Why is that?"

The next morning, with his friends Rob and Kevin, he met another of the "visionaries," Vicka Ivankovic-Mijatovic, in a jewelry shop and asked for her help. Gripping his head with one hand, she appealed to the Virgin Mary to ask God to cure him.

Boyle said he experienced an unusual sensation right there in the store. "She starts to pray over me. Rob and Kevin put their hands on me, and the heat that went through my body from her praying was causing them to sweat." Continue reading

Sources

• National Geographic, from an article by Maureen Orth, an award winning journalist, a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair Magazine, and the founder of the Marina Orth Foundation which promotes advanced learning in technology, English and leadership for over 3,200 students in Colombia.
• Image: Diana Markosian, National Geographic.

Fr Alessandro Minutella from Carini has been leading his congregation in prayer at the water source and has wanted to distribute water.

Fr Minutella believes the Virgin Mary led him to the spring.

The priest said he found the flowing water at a spiritual centre he himself had founded, called Piccola Nazareth.

Last Monday, the faithful of Piccola Nazareth were invited for prayer at the "holy" water source.

They were told that it would be distributed for the first time to whoever wanted some.

But the invite, made on Facebook, also said that Fr Minutella would not be attending the event out of respect for the Church hierarchy, after his claims of saintly voices and miracle water angered Church authority.

Archbishop Michele Pennisi of Monreale slammed Fr Minutella's claims as "misleading, manipulative and dangerous".

The archbishop also banned the priest from saying Mass at the Piccola Nazareth centre.

But Fr Minutella has accrued many faithful disciples thanks to the centre's Facebook page and website, and his followers were quick defend him from criticism.

"Jesus healed the sick and preached peace and love, but they still nailed him to a cross," wrote one of the centre's attendees on the page.

Speaking to Italian media, Fr Minutella said of the Virgin Mary: "She doesn't speak to me or for me — but she speaks through me to everybody, inviting them to pray, confess and return to God.".

"Today, people are sad and there is no serenity or peace. The water flowing is a symbol telling people of the need to purify their souls."

Sources

• Christian Post
• The Local
• Image: Blog Sicilia

Writing on his blog, suspended Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery mentioned a Scripture passage that refers to Jesus' brothers and sisters.

"We are told that Jesus had four brothers, and an indefinite number of sisters," Flannery wrote.

"This does not fit with the Church's need to present Jesus as the Son of God, conceived in a way that is different from other humans, and Mary as the perpetual virgin.

"So the scholars turned the brothers and sisters into cousins!"

He also said the Gospel account made "a believable statement - that the family of Jesus found it hard to understand what he was about".

"But the Church, who wished to present an idealised version of the Holy Family - Jesus, Mary and Joseph living in peace and harmony - choose to quietly pass over these words of Jesus.

"Not only that: these doctrines about Jesus, Mary and the Holy Family are now part of the essential doctrine of the Church that we all must accept."

Flannery also referred to the "thorn in the flesh" quote from St Paul at last Sunday's Masses.

It, he said, "greatly helped in the Church's efforts to make anything to do with sex the greatest sin".

Flannery was suspended from ministry in 2012 by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for his views on women priests, contraception and homosexuality.

He was a founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland.

Sources

• Irish Times
• Fr Flannery blog
• Image: Irish Independent

Speaking during Mass at the Sancta Martha Guesthouse on June 9, the Pope's words came only days after he said a ruling on the Medjugorje apparitions will be coming soon.

On June 9, Francis preached on aspects of Christian identity, taking his cue from Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

Among various flawed approaches, he named those "who constantly need Christian identity to be renewed", "forgetting that they were chosen, anointed", that "they have the seal of the Holy Spirit".

Francis said such people ask: "'Where are the seers who can tell us exactly what message Our Lady will be sending at 4'o'clock this afternoon?"

"And their lives depend on this," the Pope said.

"This identity is not Christian. God's final word is ‘Jesus' and nothing else."

Three out of the six children who claimed to experience visions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje in 1981 say they continue to receive visions every afternoon.

This is because not all of the secrets intended for them have been revealed, they say.

On June 6, during a brief press conference on his flight to Rome from Sarajevo in Bosnia, Pope Francis said: "We are at the point of making decisions [about Medjugorje] . . . and then they will be announced."

He said guidelines will be given to bishops on the approach they should take.

On June 9, a Vatican spokesman said Francis's homily comments were probably referring to Medjugorje.

But Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, stressed that the Pope's brief mention was not the Vatican's final word or an official pronouncement.

In his homily, Francis also cautioned against those who look for God "with these Christian spiritualites that are a little ethereal", calling them "modern Gnostics".

These people, he said, "tell you this or that: no, the last word of God is Jesus Christ, there is no other!"

The Pope also cautioned against broadening one's conscience "so much that everything enters".

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Vatican Insider
• Associated Press
• Image: Our Sunday Visitor

Cardinal Angelo Amato told a Rome conference: ""There is no fourth secret and there are no other hidden secrets."

Cardinal Amato said he had "the privilege" of reading the original manuscripts of the secrets of Fatima when he served as secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2002 to 2008.

"I meditated on them at length because they cast a light of faith and hope on the very sad events of the past century, but not only," he said.

Continue reading

The exhibit is called Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea, and runs from Dec. 5, 2014 to Apr. 12, 2015. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, this might be worth a trip.

But even if you can't see the exhibit in person, don't worry. The museum has provided an interactive feature on its website that allows people to view the great pieces of Marian art from the exhibit. The feature also includes helpful descriptions of each work's origins and significance.

See this beautiful tribute to Our Lady here.

Sources

• Catholic Vote
• Image: The Leader

Devotion to the Virgin Mary is quite strong in Islam, writes Vatican expert Father Samir Khalil Samir in an analysis for the AsiaNews service.

He notes: "The spiritual dialogue between Christians and Muslims is much more promising than cultural, theological, or political dialogue."

Continue reading

As hundreds of pilgrims were evacuated from nearby hotels, officials used sandbags and other barriers to minimise damage to the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to St Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

About six million pilgrims visit Lourdes annually, many to bathe in the grotto's normally tranquil spring waters and pray for healing at its altar, which had to be restored after it was damaged by flash floods in October last year.

The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier, said waters reached a height of 1.5 metres in the grotto.

The website for the pilgrimage complex, which includes several buildings and a sanctuary nestled beneath a rocky hillside, carried a dramatic rundown of the rising waters.

Masses were gradually cancelled, Associated Press reported. One by one, entrances to the sanctuary were cordoned off. The live video feed of the grotto went down. Then the electricity was cut off, and then phones.

"A vision of the apocalypse in the Sainte Bernadette Church, where the big movable partition is threatening to fall. The water has risen above the stairs of the choir," read one announcement.

"We need more reinforcements in the area to face these floods, which are really exceptional," said Interior Minister Manuel Valls while visiting Lourdes. He said days of sustained rains and sudden snowmelt made the flooding worse, and left some villages isolated.

Two people in the region were reported to have drowned in the floods.

Sources:

Associated Press

Reuters

Image: Midi-Pyrenees

Standing 45 metres high, the tallest Marian statue is on a 3650-metre mountain south of La Paz, the country's second largest city.

Dedicated to Our Lady of Socavon, it stands nearly 7 metres taller than the Christ the Redeemer statue atop Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Continue reading

As soon as she crossed the finish line she pulled a representation of an icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus out from under her track top, showed it to the cameras, kissed it and held it up to her face, apparently in deep prayer.

An Orthodox Christian, Defar entrusted her race to God with a sign of the cross before she began.

She convincingly bettered her fellow Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, her rival for supremacy over 5000 metres for almost a decade, who had been favoured to win gold.

The silver medal went to Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya and the bronze to Dibaba.

Defar has also twice been world champion in the 3000 meters. In Athens in 2004 she won the gold in the 5000 meters and in Beijing in 2008 she earned the bronze.

Both Muslim and Christian athletes have noticeably acknowledged God before and after their events at the London Games. The Muslims have also been observing Ramadan and praying together.

After Usain Bolt broke the Olympic record for the 100 metres, he tweeted: "I want to thank GOD for everything he has done for me cause without him none of this wouldn't be possible."

Bolt, the first man ever to win six Olympic gold medals in sprinting, is a Protestant and his second name is St Leo.

Somali-born British athlete Mo Farah, a Muslim, prayed on the track after winning his two gold medals. And when the Egyptian Alaaeldin Abouelkassem, also a Muslim, won a fencing silver, he knelt and prayed.

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

New York Times

The Spectator

Image: Zimbio

On Sunday Skinner lead a group of protesters, gathered at St Matthew's in the recitation of the Rosary.

When interviewed, Skinner said, "Yes it's vandalism and if they want to arrest me then be my guest...If it comes to that, I believe in being persecuted for my faith."

"We don't look for trouble but watch out when you start this sort of thing," he added.

Skinner said there are half a million Catholics in New Zealand who were outraged by the Mary with pregnancy test kit billboard.

He was believed to have earlier phoned St Matthew's vicar Glynn Cardy to say he would "roast slowly in hell" for erecting the billboard.

On Monday Cardy released a statement in which he said "Arthur Skinner and the Catholic Action Group used our billboard, his vandalism of it, and our property this morning to gain publicity for his point of view and to further his supposedly "Catholic" organisation's agenda. He has also announced that he was willing to be arrested for his illegal act. We believe Mr Skinner could have gained the same attention without the vandalism. While his offer to be arrested is tempting, we declined the invitation (however we wouldn't decline restitution). We would rather bring attention to the world's poor, the plight of women in too many countries, hungry children, the destruction of the environment, and the need to end violence rather than his religious intolerance."

Commenting on the Mary with pregnancy test kit billboard, Lyndsay Freer, spokesperson for the Auckland Catholic Church said "Once again, St Matthew's shows us that they have moved away from traditional Christianity, even though their hearts might be in the right place.

"It is true that Christmas is real and celebrates a real pregnancy.

"It is also true that the anxiety and needs of young solo mothers today need to be addressed with compassion and care.

"But in making this point, St Matthew's ignores the gospel account of matters surrounding the pregnancy and birth of Jesus, in which Mary is not a shocked solo mother but a young woman who has given her assent and trust to God."

Freer said she, too, had received an unhappy phone call from someone who she thought was Skinner about the poster.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• The Telegraph
• Image: Screen Shot Stuff.co.nz

The broadcast, which is declared to be "an irreverent twist on the Christmas special making it unlike anything viewers have seen before," is already causing a buzz on the Internet for its unconventionality. A backlash from the Christian community is expected as well.