Colombian diocese honored for serving Venezuelan migrants

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug 28, 2018 / 03:06 pm (ACI Prensa).- The recent wedding of a young Brazilian woman with terminal cancer was a powerful witness to the sacrifice and permanence of marriage, said the priest who celebrated the sacrament for the couple.

Fr. Mario Silva celebrated the wedding of a young couple, Jessica and Fernando, in the chapel at the Napoleão Laureano Hospital in the Brazilian state of Paraíba Aug. 20.

Silva told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, that the couple had been civilly married in 2012 and had a three-year-old child.

Jessica, who is now 27, has been fighting a very aggressive form of bone cancer since 2016 and had been hospitalized when the priest was called to administer the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.

“That night, she was in a lot of pain, and when I finished administering the sacrament to her, I asked her… if I could do anything else, and she told me she wanted to get married,” Silva said.

“She told me she had a great desire to receive the blessing of God and she knew that was missing. That would be a great healing and grace in her life. She did not want to die without receiving the blessing of marriage, because both were Catholics and had the dream of getting married in order to have a sacramental life,” he explained.

“I called her family and they gave me the husband’s telephone number. I asked him if he were interested in getting married. I began to visit the hospital more often and to go through with the process of determining whether they could enter into marriage or not,” he related.

Fr. Silva obtained the authorization of the Archdiocese of Paraíba to celebrate the wedding in the hospital and processed the couple’s corresponding papers. He interviewed the couple to ensure that they were certain in their choice and that there were no impediments or grounds for nullity.

He also discussed the nature of sacramental marriage with them.

“I emphasized that this was not simply a social event that lasts a night and then people need another one. I told them that marriage is something that they were administering, that they were giving themselves one to another and that I was just an assistant,” he recounted.

“I explained to them about love, fidelity, joy and sadness in sickness and in health. At that moment I turned to speak to the groom: Fernando, you are aware you are marrying Jessica in a very difficult moment in her life. If your love is capable of enduring these difficulties, you will be able to give her a definitive and free ‘yes’.”

During the homily, the priest spoke “about how people have little hope for Christian marriages” and that celebrating the wedding of Jessica and Fernando was a light for the whole hospital. “I think that that was what created such a stir, besides that the bride and groom had a beautiful appearance,” the priest said.

While Jessica rarely smiled while in the hospital, Silva said, “On the day of the wedding, she was smiling and spoke with great ease which was unusual. You could see that she was very renewed.” He said the bride told her that the sacramental wedding “was like starting over or being reborn.”

“Her husband takes very good care of her and wants to accompany her every day. He left his job and everything to take care of her. He gave witness to permanence and the Catholic marriage was a concrete realization of that,” the priest emphasized.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Cartagena, Colombia, Sep 7, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his trip to Colombia, Pope Francis will visit Sept. 10 the home and shrine of St. Peter Claver, a Spanish missionary priest and fellow Jesuit who is the patron saint of Colombia.

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Mexico City, Mexico, Dec 12, 2019 / 07:10 pm (CNA).-

Just inside the entrance to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is a small area with a bas-relief sculpture of the Virgin Mary on display, designed especially for the blind to encounter Our Lady.

Fr. Umberto Mauro Marsich, an Italian Xavarian missionary priest, explained to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, that the image is made of highly durable nylon fiber and is a gift from the Institute of Italian Culture and the Italian Embassy.

The sculpture is a “gift to the Archdiocese of Mexico so the blind can come here” and venerate Our Lady of Guadalupe, he said.

“They first read the entire description in Braille, the Nahuatl symbology of the image” on a panel to the side, “and then they come over and touch the image with their hands,” he explained.

Marsich, who holds a doctorate in moral theology and teaches at the Pontifical University of Mexico, played a key role in having the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the blind made and donated.

The idea came about in 2008 during an exposition of a painting of the Virgin de la Pera in Mexico which was brought to the country along with a much simpler bas-relief version.

The head of an association for the blind was in attendance at the exposition. When he touched the bas-relief image he said, “Why can’t we do something similar with Our Lady of Guadalupe?”

Fr. Marsich, who was also there at the time, said he worked with two other Italians to have a bas-relief of Our Lady of Guadalupe made.

“My friend Faranda went back to Italy and looked for people to make donations” for the work of art, Marsich said.

The sculpture was produced in the city of Faenza, Italy, in 2009. It cost about $22,000 to make.

A few days after its completion, it was brought to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where Pope Benedict XVI blessed it. It was then transported to Mexico and placed in the Guadalupe Basilica on Dec. 9, 2009.

More than 100 visually-impaired people gathered on the day the statue was installed in the basilica. Marsich said he was touched by their emotion, as, “finally being able to touch her, [they] discovered the beauty of the message conveyed to them by the Nahuatl symbology, which is a very luminous symbology.”

“People were so obviously moved that they were weeping,” he recalled.

However, the image is not just to be contemplated by visually impaired people, he pointed out.

The priest stressed that everyone can express “in some way our affection, our love, our tenderness for Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

Marsich hopes other bishops will be encouraged to ask for a replica of the image of the Virgin Mary for their dioceses, which he said would cost significantly less than the original.

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