Mary Page News

March 30, 2000

Mary Page News items give insight into our interest areas, our outreach, and the myriad ways people honor Our Lady. We welcome your input and your comments.

Features Pope Travels to Fatima in May Ecumenical Evensong Our Little Apostolate Cottage Chatter Religious Art Awards The World's Most Beautiful Crèches Marian Shrines of Italy Maria, en el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica Mary in the Secular Press Film Festival: On Mary in Film Calendar of Marian Events Prayer Corner Requests

Archive: News 1995-96 Archive: News 1997 Archive: News 1998 This week's themes: Mary and the Church: Mary and the World (ecumenism) William  Joseph Chaminade Vignette-3 / Cameo-3

Pope Travels to Fatima in May

On March 20, Archbishop Cresenzio Sepe, Secretary of the Vatican Planing Commission for the Year 2000, confirmed that Pope John Paul II will visit Fatima, Portugal on May 13. He will beatify two of the shepherd children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who experienced the Marian apparitions of Fatima.

Ecumenical Evensong

The Incarnation Hangings
Designed and made by Joanne López Kepes
Design & Consultation for Liturgical Environments

On March 25, an Ecumenical Evensong for the Feast of the Annunciation was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Dayton, Ohio. The Music Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio (The Rev. Melody Williams, chair) was sponsor of the day's choir festival. The large choir of 80 and more persons represented 17 local area parishes from various denominations. The guest director of the choir festival was Dr. Lorraine S. Brugh, Assistant Professor of Music and the Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana, where she directed the Kantorei, a select 44-voice choir with major leadership in campus worship services.

Two large banners (depicted to the right) were dedicated during the service. The banners were designed and made by Joanne López Kepes, who is a certified Liturgical Design Consultant and a professional artist. She has written and lectured extensively on liturgical art and the design of liturgical spaces.

The Marian Library was represented through a display arranged with the Annunciation in mind by Rev. Thomas Thompson, SM. Rev. Joseph Goetz, SM preached during the Vespers.

Our Little Apostolate

One of our staff received the following email:

Hello, Our little apostolate is to take petitions (prayer requests) to Our Lady here at the Shrine in Fatima, Portugal. If you wish you can send us your petitions and we will deliver them to the spot where Our Lady of Fatima appeared for you. We also pray for your intentions.

Prayerfully from Fatima. ... For more information concerning our work please visit our homepage: http://www.Fatima- Petitions.com

Cottage Chatter

Recently, The Marian Library was featured in the publication entitled The Franciscan at St. Leonard VOICE, Spring 2000.Rev. Phil Hoelle, SM. Fr, Hoelle was at one time the director of the library. In his concluding statement, he writes:

Conceived in an act of faith and born at the exchange of a Marian book written by one Marianist, the Marian Library today is a "minor miracle" and Mary's home par excellence in the Cincinnati Province of the Marianists.

We are pleased to add to Fr. Hoelle's love for the Marian Library, that it has become Mary's home par excellence not only to Marianists worldwide, but also to many others who wish to know, love and serve Mary from around the world.

Religious Art and Architecture Design Awards

If you are interested in the FAITH & FORM endowment awards for the following categories, please contact the address below:

• Religious Architecture New Facilities, Renovation Awards, Restoration
• Liturgical Design Awards
• Relgious Art Awards Visual Arts, Liturgical Furnishings, Ceremonial Objects

The World's Most Beautiful Crèches

In the event that you missed the January 2000 edition of Catholic Digest in honor of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, you may want to browse this lovely article by Mary Jean Jecklin about her visit to Munich's Bavarian National Museum. Much of the collection was donated by Max Schmederer (1854-1917). Jecklin writes, "I was amused to find Nativity sets inhabited by squealing pigs, lowing cows, bleating sheep, barking dogs, lumbering elephants, and colorful birds. Leaving the museum, I better understood how Christ's birth and life have been artistically interpreted to encourage devotion. Everyday people felt themselves a part of these wonderful scenes.."

The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute shares these sentiments. Visitors will find a collection of 60 nativities on display all throughout 2000. A text to interpret the nativities is available on location.

You may be interested in the book recommended by Jecklin, Krippen, Nativity Scenes, Crèches, by Nina Gockerell, published by Taschen, 1998, Benedikt Taschen Verlag GMbH, Cologne, Germany. The book is available through Catholic Digest at catholicbookshelf.org.

Marian Shrines of Italy

Yet another book just in time to read in preparation for a trip to Rome (and Italy) for the Holy Year!

As the acknowlegment of the book begins, "To do a book on the Marian Shrines of Italy, where there are over 1500, is a job of great magnitude and discernment. It would take an encyclopedia to cover them all. Where to start? Any worthwhile research starts with a library. I began by contacting the Marian Library at the University of Dayton. They are most gracious and helpful. Bro. William Fackovec, a Librarian and Marianist Brother for many years, was able to locate two books on Marian Shrines in Italy...

And, with joy, so the story goes. The book is edited by Bro. Francis Mary Kalvelage, FI and published by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, Our Lady's Chapel, New Bedford, MA. The book contains 36 pages of colorful illustrations on over thirty of the 1500 Marian shrines in Italy. As stated in the advertisement, "The book covers that topic with an underlying theme of the intimate and vital relationship between Mary and the Church."

For information of this book, please contact:

Academy of the Immaculate
PO Box 667
Valatie NY 12184
tel/Fax (518) 758-1584
E-mail: mimike@pipeline.com

Maria, en el Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica

In 1999, the director of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute, Rev. Johann G. Roten, SM, gave a presentation on Marian catechesis in Venezuela. An excerpt of his talk in the Spanish language can be obtained via the newsletter below. For the English text see: Mary – A Living Catechism

El Mariano is a newsletter in service of Marian communications in the Spanish language. The editors are Rev. Antonio Larocca, SMC, and Rev. Javier Alson, SMC. For information on this communication and the SERVICIO MARIANO DE COMUNICACIÓN, please see

Mary in the Secular Press

Commentary on Mary in various news articles from March 16 to March 28, 2000.

The director and editors of Mary Page under the auspices of the International Marian Research Institute do not necessarily endorse or agree with the events and ideas expressed in this feature. Our sole purpose is to report on items about Mary gleaned from a myriad of papers representing the secular press.

• Pope John Paul II began his remarks to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on his arrival in Bethlehem with the words, "Here Christ was born of the Virgin Mary," Agence France Press reported on March 22. Those words were the reason for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 and the reason for his coming to Bethlehem, he said.

  According to Agence France Press reports of March 25, the pope was greeted by thousands, including a group of nuns waving yellow and white Vatican flags and singing "Ave Maria," on his arrival in Nazareth on the feast of the Annunciation. The pope said mass in the Basilica of the Annunciation on the day commemorating angel Gabriel's visit to the Virgin Mary telling her she would give birth to Christ. In his homily he appealed to Christians around the world to defend the family and respect the dignity of man. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur on that same date reported that the main thrust of the sermon was to aim for protection of the family.

  In Nazareth, Jesus' boyhood home, the pope paid special tribute to the Virgin Mary, saying, "Here it is especially easy to understand why all generations call Mary blessed," the New York Times said on March 26.

• The New York Police Department turned to a noted criminal profiler for help as attacks on statues of the Virgin Mary in Brooklyn, which began in September, continued, the New York Daily News reported on March 20.

• In related reports:
  • The NYPD's Bias Unit is investigating and offering a $40,000 reward, according to an Associated Press report on March 17. Deputy Inspector Barbara Sicilia said "It certainly is an attack on the Catholic religion.'
  • Anguished parishioners demanded action after a hammer-wielding vandal damaged a statue of the Virgin Mary outside Holy Cross Church in Flatbush, the New York Daily News reported on March 17.
  • Artur Matuszewski and art restoration students at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, all volunteering their time, are finding beautiful carvings and details as they restore statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis damaged by vandals since September. Vandalism by bigots is suspected in the desecration of 11 statues outside Catholic churches, a Knights of Columbus Hall, a nunnery and a private home in Brooklyn, the New York Daily News reported on March 27.
• A church on the island of Anglesey in North Wales may have been the last resting place of the Virgin Mary, writes historian Graham Phillips in his new book, "The Marian Conspiracy." According to reports from the London Independent, the Midland Sunday Mercury and the Western Daily Press (Bristol), Graham believes, after years of investigation, that Mary's burial site is the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Llanerchymedd, rather than Ephesus in Turkey or in Jerusalem. To support his case, he cites a letter from the first Archbishop of Canterbury to Pope Gregory the Great in 597 claiming a church containing Mary's tomb had been found in a church off the west coast of Britain. A former vicar of St. Mary the Virgin said St. Mary's was not the oldest church on Anglesey and the island had no churches dating to the time of Jesus.

• The Virgin Mary appeared to them in a mirror in the bedroom of Elian Gonzalez, his relatives said, according to a New York times report of March 29. Six-year-old Elian, a Cuban boy found floating on an innertube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last Thanksgiving Day has been the subject of a dispute between relatives who want him to remain with them and immigration officials who want to return him to his father in Cuba.

• The Virgin Mary played a role in the lives of leaders of the Uganda doomsday cult that perished in a fire in Kanungu, Uganda, on March 17, according to press reports.

  In 1989 three women told Joseph Kibwetere, leader of the cult, that the Virgin Mary had led them to him and he had been anointed to help spread the word of God. Relatives say that his meeting with the women was the start of a fateful chain of events that led to estrangement from them, a clash with the Catholic Church and eventual excommunication, and the death of at least 330 followers of his cult, according to a Montreal Gazette report of March 27.

  Leaders of the Uganda cult claimed the Virgin Mary had appeared to them in a vision and that cult members should seek out paradise now, according to a suicide letter published by the Monitor daily, Deutsche Presse-Agentur said on March 25.

  An ex-cult member said that Kibwetere was influenced by a woman who told him that Christ and the Virgin Mary sent her messages telling her to tell cult members to "bring more money," Agence France Press said on March 28. It is believed that Kibwetere and others took money from the people and that he is on the run following the discovery of the bodies in the ruins of a church belonging to the sect.

• Joseph Terelya, who spent 23 years in prison in the former Soviet Union for leading the Catholic underground, was to discuss apparitions of the Virgin Mary that he and others claim to have seen in Hrushiw, Ukraine, during a talk about his experiences on April 2 in St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Tonawanda, the Buffalo News said on March 25.

• On March 27, the Swiss Depeschenagentur reported that an American soldier was imprisoned in Rome for the damage he did to the head of an angel at the feet of a Marian statue at the Spanish Steps. Every year on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, Mary is honored by the pope through a presentation of a bouquet of roses placed at the foot of this statue.

Film Festival: On Mary in Film

The final showing for the film festival, Mary of Nazareth, will be on April 5, 2000.

The University of Dayton Sesquicentennial Film Festival of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute has been attended by students, faculty, staff, and local residents of the Dayton area. Professors of the university enrich the festival from their respective disciplines.

Mary and the Church: Mary and the World (ecumenism)

Mary and the Church: Mary and the World (ecumenism)

Some excerpts:

[guidelines for Catholics]

• the ecumenical aspect of Marian devotion is shown in the Catholic Church's desire that, without in any way detracting from the unique character of this devotion [seeking M's intercession], (LG 66, SC 103) every care should be taken to avoid any exaggeration which could mislead other Christian brethren about the true doctrine of the Catholic Church. (LG 67) 32
• Similarly, the Church desires that any manifestation of cult which is opposed to correct Catholic practice should be eliminated. 32
• since it is natural that in true devotion to the Blessed Virgin "the Son should be duly known, loved and glorified ... when the Mother is honored," (LG 66) such devotion is an approach to Christ, the source and center of ecclesiastical communion, in which all who openly confess that He is God and Lord, Savior and sole Mediator (cf. 1 Tm. 2:5) are called to be one, with one another, with Christ and with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.32

Prayer Corner Requests

You are invited to help us pray for our prayer corner intentions.

The intentions of the Holy Father for April 2000:

• General Intentions: That, through Christians' generous welcome, refugees and immigrants may experience God the Father's goodness
  
• Mission Intentions:That the peoples of Africa, torn by discord and wars, may find in the Gospel the strength to repress any urge to revenge and violence and to open their hearts to mercy and reconciliation.

To read a meditation on these intentions, see Apostleship of Prayer at http://www.cin.org/ap/aopapr2000.html

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