ROME/ITALY, Don Stefano Mueller/mda. The month honouring the Blessed Mother was opened already on 28 April in the Gesù divin Salvatore Parish in Tor de’Cenci. Eighteen men and their parish priest, Fr Cicero, a Brazilian, had fetched the large Pilgrim Mother for Italy (known as the Auxiliar) from the shrine in Belmonte. She was welcomed to the parish during a festive Holy Mass in the parish church. She will remain there for the whole of May.
The first week became a “Marian Week” with daily devotions, Masses, catechesis, group meetings and home visits, during which the Brazilian Sisters of Mary working in Italy co-operated zealously.
Fr Stefano, Rector of the Matri Ecclesiae Shrine, preached at the end of the week.
There was an “historic” encounter on Saturday, 4 May, when a pilgrimage from the region to which the Tor de’Cenci belongs visited the Roman city shrine Divino Amore with the Mother Thrince Admirable of Schoenstatt in the form of the large Pilgrim Mother for Italy.
It was also thrice admirable that already on 21 April a wayside shrine of the MTA had been dedicated in the parish garden.
Since then many Pilgrim Mother circles have been started and Fr Stefano is preparing Fr Cicero to enter into the covenant of love.
The opening of May at Belmonte
“Labour Day”, which is also a Bank holiday in Italy, was used by the permanent and temporary inhabitants of Belmonte to attend the General Audience with Pope Francis. During this audience he called upon the people to pray the Rosary in the month of May and to work in solidarity for jobs, particularly for young people, and especially for just and worthy conditions of employment for all.
That afternoon almost the entire Italian team of schoenstatt.org met in Belmonte. In the coming weeks you will see the result of two intensive hours of work, above all in programming and design.
Even though the opening of May plays no role in Italian parishes (instead the 31 May is celebrated in a festive way), the month was solemnly opened that evening in the shrine at Belmonte with a votive Mass of the Patrona Bavariae, the Patroness of Bavaria (since the majority of those present came from Bavaria).
Encounters and contacts
Many other encounters and new contacts also took place: with Abbè Caliope from Burundi who is studying for his doctorate at the Catholic University in Eichstatt, and who has been spending some months in Rome for deeper studies before he returns home as a Professor to engage in priestly formation there. Together with Fr Valentino OFM, who works at the Generalate in Rome, it was possible to prepare three meetings with families to introduce them to Schoenstatt. Fr Adilson, from the Brazilian College, arrived in Belmonte for Holy Mass with pilgrims from Brazil, among whom was the diocesan leader of the Pilgrim Mother Movement (she is responsible for more than three thousand Pilgrim Mother missionaries in her diocese). Fr Jorge, a Federation Priest from Argentina, visited the shrine and brought with him a greeting and blessing from Pope Francis’ morning Holy Mass. Canon Alfred Rottler spent some days with three further pilgrims around Belmonte, and among other things made an impressive pilgrimage to Manoppello, famous for having an image of the Holy Face on a thin veil, reputed to be identical to the Veil of Veronica. Msgr Peter Wolf celebrated the 30th wedding anniversary with a couple.
In the expectation of Pentecost
On 9 May Fr Stefano Mueller took part for the first time in a Holy Mass of collaboration with spiritual communities and movements in the church S. Maria sopra Minerva. The Pentecost Vigil of the Movements with our Holy Father for the Year of Faith is fast approaching, and the first contacts have been made with a small, but very fine group of people.
Rome’s Schoenstatt Family, as well as Belmonte, are now preparing for the Pentecost Vigil, and very particularly for crowning the Auxiliar Pilgrim Mother for Italy as the Queen of Families on 7 September during a large celebration with a few hundred pilgrims.
The happy community at Belmonte was enlarged during this time by the arrival of Mr & Mrs Kaletta from Hildesheim, Germany. They were going to take over temporarily for the third time from the custodian family, Mr & Mrs Hurt. They were accompanied by Mr & Mrs Maria and Richard Miehling from Eichstatt. They had spent a few days here in Belmonte last Autumn, and once again got fully involved sorting out many little things in the CASA DELL’ALLEANZA and repairing technical equipment, as well as working in the garden. In the process spiritual enrichment and relaxation were not neglected: they went all over the place on their Vespa. Fr Georg Egle, who spent five days at Belmonte to negotiate with Architect Pörsch about the further work on the DOMUS PATER KENTENICH, and Maria Fischer of schoenstatt.org completed the spiritual and temporal community in these intense days of expectation of Pentecost.
Original: German. Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester, England
