Pope Francis: Our Lady of Knock brings a message of hope

By Courtney Mares for CNA

March 19, 2021 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

The Knock Shrine. Public domain.

Vatican City, Mar 19, 2021 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis said Friday that Our Lady of Knock exemplifies the importance of prayer and hope as he officially designated Knock as an international Marian and Eucharistic shrine.

The pope sent a video message to the shrine in Ireland to mark its official designation. The video was played during a live-streamed Mass at the shrine on the evening of March 19.

“How many families in the course of almost a century and a half have handed on the faith to their children and gathered their daily labors around the prayer of the rosary, with the image of Our Lady of Knock at its center,” Pope Francis said in his video message.

“The arms of the Virgin, outstretched in prayer, continue to show us the importance of prayer as the message of hope which goes out from this shrine.”

The pope said that the Irish have been a “missionary people,” expressing gratitude for the many priests who left Ireland to proclaim the Gospel as missionaries and the “many lay people who emigrated to faraway lands but still kept their devotion to Our Lady.”

“Ever since the apparition on August 21, 1879, when the Blessed Virgin Mary, together with St. Joseph and St. John the Apostle, appeared to some villagers, the Irish people, wherever they have found themselves, have expressed their faith and devotion to Our Lady of Knock,” Francis said.

Fifteen witnesses saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, angels, and the Lamb of God on the south gable of the town church of Knock in County Mayo in the west of Ireland in 1879.

For about two hours, a crowd gathered to adore the apparition and to pray the rosary. Despite the rainstorm, the ground around the gable did not get wet.

Unlike in most other Marian apparitions, the Virgin Mary was silent the entire time and did not offer any sort of message or prophecy.

In his video message, Pope Francis said that Our Lady of Knock’s silence still contains an important message.

“The message which comes from Knock is that of the great value of silence for our faith,” the pope said.

“It is this silence in the face of mystery, which does not mean giving up on understanding, but understanding while aided and supported by the love of Jesus who offered himself for all of us as the Lamb sacrificed for the salvation of humanity. It is this silence in the face of the great mystery of a love which cannot be reciprocated unless in trusting abandonment to the will of the merciful Father.”

Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam, the shrine’s custodian, said that Pope Francis’ recognition of Knock as an international Eucharistic and Marian shrine was a “momentous event” and expressed his profound gratitude to the pope.

“It is most fitting that it would be announced and celebrated on the Feast of St. Joseph in the Year of St. Joseph, because alongside Our Lady, St. John the Evangelist and the Lamb of God, St. Joseph also appeared here on that August evening in 1879,” Neary said.

This official designation comes two years after a miraculous healing involving Eucharistic adoration at Knock Shrine in 1989 was officially recognized by the Vatican.

Marion Carroll, a woman who had been bedridden for years with multiple sclerosis, was healed during a blessing with a monstrance at the shrine.

Vatican officials found the Knock apparition itself to be “trustworthy and satisfactory” after two separate commissions, in 1879 and 1936.

Pope John Paul II visited Knock in 1979, saying that he was coming “as a pilgrim.” Mother Teresa spoke at the Marian shrine in 1993 about the sacredness of unborn human life. And Pope Francis visited in 2018.

“I pray that pilgrims from all over Ireland and from across the world who come here, carrying their crosses, will ‘experience deeply God’s closeness, the tenderness of the Virgin Mary and the company of the saints,’ so as to be encouraged and enabled to return home with a more buoyant faith, with hope in their hearts and a more ardent love for God and neighbor,” Neary said.

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Amid fresh unrest, all Iraqis must work for unity, Pope says

October 5, 2017 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Oct 5, 2017 / 04:49 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Chaldean Catholic Church begins their annual synod, Pope Francis kicked the meeting off by telling leaders of the eastern rite that given the new apprehensions arising from increasing political instability, they must urgently work to promote unity at all levels of society.

“If in fact a tragic page has closed in some regions of your country, it means that there is still much to be done,” the Pope said Oct. 5, urging Chaldean Church leaders in Iraq “to work tirelessly as builders of unity.”

This unity is especially important between pastors of the Chaldean Catholic Church and leaders of other Catholic rites in the area, who should work together in “promoting dialogue and collaboration among all the actors of public life” in helping to facilitate the return of displaced persons and to heal divisions, he said.

Francis stressed that this commitment to unity “is necessary now more than ever in the current Iraqi context, faced with new uncertainties about the future.”

“There is need for a process of national reconciliation and of a joint effort of all the components of society, to reach shared solutions for the good of the whole country,” he said, and voiced his hope that the “strength of spirit, hope and industriousness” characteristic of Iraqi society would never diminish.

He told the Church leaders to “remain firm” in their intention of “not falling into discouragement before the difficulties that still remain despite what has been done in the reconstruction work on the Nineveh Plain.”

Pope Francis spoke to participants in the Synod of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which is taking place from Oct. 4-8 in Rome,and comes on the tails of a recent Aid to the Church in Need conference on rebuilding towns and villages on the Nineveh Plains, during which Patriarch Luis Rafael Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad, was a keynote speaker.

In addition to new fears and uncertainties roused by the recent referendum vote to liberate Iraqi Kurdistan from the Iraqi central government, making it an independent state, other talking points in the Chaldean synod will include forced migration, the return of displaced persons, the rebuilding of villages on the Nineveh Plains, Chaldean Church law, liturgical topics and vocational pastoral activities.

In his speech, the Pope said that given Iraq’s roots as a land of “civilization, encounter and dialogue” evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, it’s especially important that Christians in the region are united in promoting “respectful relations and interreligious dialogue through all components of society.”

He also encouraged them for a number of new vocations to the priesthood and religious life. However, with a general decline in vocations throughout the Church, Francis also cautioned against “welcoming into seminaries people who are not called by the Lord.”

“It’s necessary to examine well the vocation of youth and to verify their authenticity,” he said, explaining that formation in seminaries must be integral and “capable of including various aspects of life responding in a harmonious way to the four human, spiritual, pastoral and intellectual dimensions.”

The Pope also urged Chaldean Church leaders to work together with the Latin Church to address the diaspora of their faithful throughout the world, with an eye to the local ecclesial contexts in which they live, both from a numerical point of view, and that of religious liberty.

Special attention must be paid, he said, to the pastoral care of faithful in the territories where ancient eastern communities “have long been established,” while also promoting “communion and fraternity with the Latin rite communities in order to give the faithful a good witness without spreading divisions and disagreements.”

The Congregation for Oriental Churches will help in this task, Pope Francis said, and closed his address praying that the Chaldean Synod gathering would be “a fruitful moment of fraternal dialogue and reflection for the good of the beloved Chaldean Church.”

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