Fatima centenary celebrations at Scotland's Marian
shrine
(Vatican Radio) Catholics from around Scotland will mark the
centenary of the first Fatima apparitions this weekend at their national Marian
shrine.
Scottish Catholics will gather at Carfin Grotto on Saturday
13th May 2017 to join Catholics around the world in celebrating the 100th
anniversary since the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared several times to three
shepherd children in 1917. The first apparition occurred on 13th May, which has
since become the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
Pope Francis will celebrate Mass in Fatima on Saturday 13th
May. During Mass, he will preside over the canonization ceremony of Blessed
Francisco Marto and Blessed Jacinta Marto, two of the children to whom Our Lady
appeared. The pilgrimage is expected to attract up to one million of the
faithful.
At Carfin, the faithful will celebrate Mass to mark the
canonizations. Afterwards, they will form a Rosary Procession that will move
towards the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. In the evening, there will be a
Torchlight Rosary Procession and a second Mass, celebrated by Bishop John
Keenan of the Diocese of Paisley. The sacrament of reconciliation will also be
available before and after the procession and Mass.
Carfin Grotto is the national shrine in Scotland dedicated
to Our Lady of Lourdes. It was established in the early twentieth century in a
small mining village in the West of Scotland. Following a pilgrimage to
Lourdes, the parish priest in Carfin, Father Thomas Taylor, made it his life’s
work to establish a memorial shrine to Our Lady based on the shrine at
Massabielle.
Father Taylor encouraged the locals to help his vision
become a reality. He gave many coal miners something to focus on during the
Coal Miners’ Strike of 1921. It is said that Father Taylor was aware of the
need to counter the effects of unemployment on the morale of the people.
Almost immediately, Catholics from around Scotland began to
flock to Carfin to honour the Blessed Virgin. Two years after it opened, Father
Taylor recorded a single pilgrimage of over fifty thousand pilgrims in 1924.
The grotto has undergone several developments since its
early days. Now, Carfin is home to several chapels and many more statues, a
reliquary and a pilgrimage centre. The All Saints Reliquary Chapel houses one
of the largest collections of relics outside of Rome.
Within the grotto, the ‘Glass Chapel’ of Our Lady, Maid of
the Seas is particularly well-known among the Scots. The chapel was used at the
famous Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988 and was later relocated to Carfin. It
was then dedicated to the victims of the Lockerbie Disaster, when 270 people
died after a bomb brought a plane down over Scotland.
- Stay
connected with Vatican Radio to follow the events of Pope Francis’
pilgrimage to Fatima, where Chris Altieri will be reporting from Friday
12th May until Saturday 13th May 2017.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét