Vatican City, Apr 8, 2021 / 08:00 am America/Denver (CNA).
On Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis will offer Mass in a church containing the relics of both St. Faustina Kowalska and St. John Paul II.
This will be the second year that the pope has chosen to offer Mass in the church, Santo Spirito in Sassia, which was transformed into a center for Divine Mercy spirituality.
Pope Francis’ Divine Mercy Sunday Mass on April 11 will not be open to the public but will be broadcast on television and via live stream at 10:30 a.m. local time.
Following Mass, Pope Francis will recite the Regina Coeli prayer from inside the church.
Located near St. Peter’s Basilica, Santo Spirito in Sassia is Rome’s official Divine Mercy church. Before the coronavirus epidemic, people gathered each day there at 3 p.m. to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
“At the hour of Divine Mercy … truly the church is filled with many souls — the young, the sick, couples, and people facing great difficulties of a moral nature who come to implore the Divine Mercy,” Msgr. Jozef Bart, the church’s rector previously told CNA.
The Polish priest was personally selected by Pope John Paul II to transform the 16th-century church, originally built as a hospital chapel, into a center for Divine Mercy spirituality in 1994.
When John Paul II visited the church on Divine Mercy Sunday in 1995, he highlighted the church’s role as a place of both spiritual and physical healing throughout history.
“Today in particular, I am pleased to be able to give thanks to God in this Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, attached to the hospital of the same name, and now a specialized center for the pastoral care of the sick, as well as for the promotion of the spirituality of Divine Mercy,” John Paul II said.
“It is very significant and timely that precisely here, next to this very ancient hospital, prayers are said and work is done with constant care for the health of body and spirit,” he said of the church.
The Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, the order to which St. Faustina belonged, help to lead the daily prayers and catechesis on the Divine Mercy in Santo Spirito in Sassia.
“Jesus told St. Faustina, ‘Man does not find any peace until he turns with faith to the Divine Mercy,’” Msgr. Bart said.
“We priests must remember that we are channels, instruments of the Divine Mercy,” he added.
At the pope’s Mass at Santo Spirito in Sassia last year, Francis recalled that St. Faustina wrote in her diary in 1937 that “In a soul that is suffering we should see Jesus on the cross, not a parasite and a burden… [Lord] you give us the chance to practice deeds of mercy, and we practice making judgments.”
Pope Francis said: “Today, in this church that has become a shrine of mercy in Rome, and on this Sunday that St. John Paul II dedicated to Divine Mercy 20 years ago, we confidently welcome this message. Jesus said to St. Faustina: ‘I am love and mercy itself; there is no human misery that could measure up to my mercy’.”
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Patrick Norton stands near Sister Annella Zervas’ grave, October 2022. / Credit: Patti Armstrong
St. Paul, Minn., Dec 10, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pointing toward the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at the Saint Benedict Monastery cemetery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, 61-year-old Patrick Norton recounts the day 13 years ago when he was painting light posts in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother and encountered who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas, OSB.
Zervas, a Benedictine sister, died in 1926 at the age of 26 of a debilitating skin disease.
Norton, who was plucked from the streets of Bombay as a child by Mother Teresa and later adopted by an American family, had been hired by the College of Saint Benedict on Oct. 27, 2010, to do some painting. He told CNA that while finishing up the last light post in front of the grotto he thought to himself, “I wonder if the Blessed Mother thinks I am doing a good job?” When he looked down, there was a nun in full Benedictine habit.
“‘You are doing a good job,’ she told me. We talked a little, but I don’t remember what it was about. Then I watched as she disappeared,” he told CNA.
The encounter was so astonishing that Norton kept it to himself for a year. But in a chance conversation, he was told “there is a holy nun buried in that cemetery” and he came to learn it was Zervas. Eventually, he saw a picture of her and was certain that she was the one who had appeared to him.
Patrick Norton stands beside the lamp post he was painting near the Marian grotto when he saw a woman in full Benedict habit who he believes was Sister Annella Zervas. Credit: Patti Armstrong
An elderly religious sister at Saint Benedict Monastery — who also happened to be named Sister Annella — shared with Norton pictures of Zervas and a booklet about the young sister’s life called “Apostles of Suffering in Our Day” by Benedictine priest Joseph Kreuter, published in 1929.
“Why isn’t she a saint yet?’ Norton asked.
“Oh, I’m in my 80s and I’m the only one promoting her cause,” she replied.
“Sister, why can’t I help you out?” he replied.
Norton said she just looked at him. “I didn’t have any experience but felt compassion for her, and also, I did see Sister Annella, so I felt I had to promote her cause.”
He read in the booklet that Zervas entered the convent at age 15 and died from a painful, unsightly, and odiferous skin disease at age 26. She was also subjected to attacks from the devil and from a heartburn that made it hard to keep food down. At the time of her death, she weighed only 40 pounds. Yet, she asked God to allow her even more suffering and for the strength to bear it so she could offer it up for the Church.
Every week, Norton made 10 copies of the booklet to pass out. “I went to Sister Annella’s grave and told her, ‘If I am going to make more books, I need money.’”
A short time later he had a conversation with someone he had just met and told about Zervas. “How can I help?” the person asked him.
“Can you help me make 20 books a week instead of just 10?”
“How about 20,000?” the donor, who wanted to remain anonymous, replied.
The number of books Norton has now distributed is about 100,000. It was also previously published in French and Sri Lanken.
Another good Samaritan arranged for Norton to be interviewed for a video called “The Sanctity of Two Hearts.”
A friend of Norton’s located Joanne Zervas, a niece of Sister Annella’s, and Norton met with her. She gave him many of her aunt’s personal effects for safekeeping, including family letters, a silver spoon used to give holy Communion when Zervas was incapacitated, her rosary, a book stained with what is believed to be her blood, and candles that burned in her room when she died.
Word spread about the sister and there were reports of answered prayers through her intercession. Yet, it seemed unlikely that a cause for her canonization would open.
Norton recounted that Bishop Donald Joseph Kettler of the Diocese of St. Cloud encouraged him to keep telling his story but declined to take further steps in order to respect the wishes of the Benedictine sisters who were not interested in opening a cause for Zervas.
In a SC Times article in 2017, a spokesperson for the Sisters of the Order of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, said it was not the Benedictine way to promote one sister above another as it would “be contrary to humility.” A spokesperson from the diocese said that without their support, there would be no cause.
But Norton and a small group that had formed to pray that her cause be opened met monthly at the cemetery and kept praying.
After years of disappointment, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis informed Norton that he was appealing to the wrong diocese. Zervas had died in her parents’ home in Moorhead, Minnesota, which is in the Crookston Diocese. But again, there was no interest in opening a cause there.
“I went through darkness,” Norton admitted. “I would say, ‘Really Lord, are you hearing me?’ One day I said, ‘I’m not getting any younger you know.’”
Norton questioned if he was even the right person to promote Zervas. “I’m not a doctor or a lawyer; I’m just a painter,” he said. But he had told the Lord: “Let me live each day for you, and I will tell people about her through my nothingness.”
Patrick Norton speaks during event at the grotto in the cemetery during event where the bishop’s letter was read in October 2023. Credit: Patti Armstrong
Then in 2021, Bishop Andrew Cozzens was appointed to the Diocese of Crookston. Norton heard that Cozzens had known about Zervas since he was a boy. Then on Oct. 15 Norton heard — through a letter from the bishop that was read at the cemetery to the prayer group — that initial steps are being put in place by the diocese to begin an investigation into Zervas’ life, which will make it possible for a cause to be opened.
Norton has now been promoting Zervas’ story for more than a decade.
“I couldn’t fall asleep that night,” Norton told CNA. “I was overwhelmed. The first thing I did was to thank Our Lord and Our Lady. Before going to bed, every night, I always kiss the cheek of Our Lady of Fátima statue [in his home] and say, ‘Good night, Mother.’ And I kiss the feet of Our Lord on a big crucifix from a monastery in Spain and say, ‘You are my Lord and my God. There is no other God, and I love you.’”
“Even before Sister Annella appeared to me, every Mother’s Day, I brought roses to the grotto and would tell [Mary], ‘You are the best Ma in the whole world. Happy Mother’s Day, Ma.’ I’d sit there and look at the big crucifix and pray the rosary.”
Norton said he is at peace with his efforts over the years to make Zervas’ life and holiness known. “Since the diocese is taking over, I’m going to just be silent and do my best to live in humility and pray,” he said. “I will pray a lot and thank the Lord for the work he is doing.”
Pope Francis celebrates Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Sep 23, 2021 / 09:50 am (CNA).
Pope Francis invited Europe’s bishops Thursday to not just worry about secularization and a growing lack of faith, but to do something about it by introducing people to the joy of an encounter with Jesus.
“So many people are induced to feel only material needs, and not a need for God,” the pope said at a Sept. 23 Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Certainly, we are ‘preoccupied’ by this, but are we really ‘occupied’ with responding to it?”
“It is easy, but ultimately pointless, to judge those who do not believe or to list the reasons for secularization,” he underlined. “The word of God challenges us to look to ourselves. Do we feel concern and compassion for those who have not had the joy of encountering Jesus or who have lost that joy? Are we comfortable because deep down our lives go on as usual, or are we troubled by seeing so many of our brothers and sisters far from the joy of Jesus?”
Pope Francis’ addressed 39 bishops from Europe during a Mass for the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE). The Mass marked the opening of the CCEE’s plenary assembly, which is taking place in Rome Sept. 23-26.
In his homily, Francis reflected on a reading from the Book of the Prophet Haggai.
“Those words – ‘Reflect on your ways!’ – are challenging because today, in Europe, we Christians can be tempted to remain comfortably ensconced in our structures, our homes and our churches, in the security provided by our traditions, content with a certain degree of consensus, while all around us churches are emptying and Jesus is increasingly forgotten,” he said.
He urged them to think about how many people have lost their hunger and thirst for God, because “there is no one to awaken in them a hunger for faith and to satisfy that thirst in the human heart, that ‘innate and perpetual thirst’ of which Dante speaks (Par., II, 19) and which the
dictatorship of consumerism gently but insistently tries to suppress.”
Pope Francis also warned about seeing the faith as “a relic of the past,” which he said happens when people have not seen Jesus at work in their own lives.
“Often this is because we, by our lives, have not sufficiently shown him to them,” he told the bishops and others present.
“God makes himself seen in the faces and actions of men and women transformed by his presence,” he said. “If Christians, instead of radiating the contagious joy of the Gospel, keep speaking in an outworn intellectualistic and moralistic religious language, people will not be able to see the Good Shepherd.”
Francis explained that people “will not see the One whose incredible passion we preach: for it is a consuming passion, a passion for mankind. This divine, merciful and overpowering love is itself the perennial newness of the Gospel.”
“It demands of us, dear brothers, wise and bold decisions, made in the name of the mad love with which Christ has saved us.”
According to Pope Francis, “Jesus does not ask us to make arguments for God, but to show him, in the same way the saints did, not by words but by our lives.”
The saints, he said, “were not concerned about dark times, hardships and those divisions that are always present. They did not waste time criticizing or laying blame. They lived the Gospel, without worrying about relevance or politics.”
With the gentle strength of God’s love, the saints “built monasteries, reclaimed land, enlivened the spirit of individuals and countries,” the pope continued. “They did not have a ‘social program,’ in quotes, but the Gospel alone.”
“Let us help today’s Europe, faint with weariness – this is the sickness of Europe today – to rediscover the ever youthful face of Jesus and his Bride. How can we fail to devote ourselves completely to making all people see this unfading beauty?” he concluded.
Denver Newsroom, May 22, 2022 / 12:12 pm (CNA).
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