The theme for this year’s feast of Bl Benedict Daswa is “Called to be Jesus’ disciples like Bl Benedict Daswa”. The celebrations of the feast day will take place on February 1 at Tshitanini Village near Ṱhohoyandou, where the future shrine and pilgrimage centre will be located.
Church / Eucharist / Mass / Sacraments
The mystery of the Holy Mass lies solely in the Eucharist, the Eucharist being a commemoration of the Last Supper event, writes Joachim Anakwenze.
The first parish in South Africa had outbreaks of hostility between priests and some laity in the 1820s and ‘30s, as MARTIN KEENAN explains.
The majority of Catholic Church workers violently killed in 2017 were victims of attempted robberies, the Vatican’s Fides agency said, with Nigeria and Mexico topping the list countries where the most brutal murders were carried out.
With millions of people fleeing violence, persecution and poverty around the globe, individual nations must expand options that make it possible for migrants and refugees to cross their borders safely and legally, Pope Francis said.
Fear and the shame of admitting one’s own sins leads to pointing fingers and accusing others rather than recognising one’s own faults, Pope Francis said.
A person who was ahead of his time was St John Paul II. In 1995, he wrote a letter to women of the world, still available on the Vatican website. In that letter, he said, “Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. … Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude.”
A trio of Nigerian bishops condemned the enslavement of Nigerians who traveled to Libya for work, calling the practice a horrific abuse of human dignity.
A major shrine of Marian devotion is dedicated to Our Lady of Vailankanni in Southern India which draws huge throngs, even of non-Christian pilgrims. WALTER MIDDLETON writes about the shrine and recalls a personal miracle.
