Maker of rosary for 2024 National Eucharistic Congress hope to inspire Eucharistic devotion

Francesca Pollio Fenton   By Francesca Pollio Fenton for CNA

March 1, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print

 

The official rosary for the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress. / Credit: Ghirelli

CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The Catholic rosary company Ghirelli recently announced its partnership with the National Eucharistic Congress in making the official rosary for the congress, which will be held July 17–21 in Indianapolis.

Founded by Alessandro and Cinzia Ghirelli, the family-run company has been crafting rosaries for more than 30 years. It has created the official rosaries used by the past three popes that are given by the Holy Father to special guests during his audiences and apostolic journeys.

Ghirelli has worked with Catholic shrines around the world — including Fatima, Knock, Lourdes, and others — to create their official rosaries. Now, the company is supplying the official rosary for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress.

Dino Piccinini, managing director of Ghirelli in the United States, spoke with CNA about the inspiration behind the rosary for the congress.

Piccinini explained that the rosary is “very Eucharistic in nature. The inspiration is the monstrance.”

“The centerpiece is a miniature version of the monstrance that’s going to be at the congress in July that’s going to be holding the Blessed Sacrament,” he said.

He shared that Ghirelli was able to use drawings and renderings of the monstrance created for the National Eucharistic Congress in order to replicate it in great detail.

The design of the crucifix is based on John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches.”

“It’s natural. It’s earthy. And we pulled that theme into making it into a crucifix because there’s passages that say Jesus was hung on a tree, which is symbolic of the cross,” Piccinini explained.

“It just made sense that we have kind of a double whammy of a Eucharistic theme,” he added. “So, we’ve got the grapes on the vines and we have the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament inside.”

Piccinini hopes that this rosary will inspire people to “increase their devotion to the Eucharist and at the same time to the devotion of the rosary because we all know that the rosary is a very powerful weapon against all the battles that are happening.”

“I think having the Eucharist and increasing the devotion to the Eucharist and receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist more often and also praying the rosary more frequently, I think people will be in such a better place and it’ll bring people back to the Church.”

“We share in the mission the congress has set; we just want the renewal of the Church in our country and in the world,” Piccinini said.

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Mexico’s bishops hope politicians would be enlightened by Our Lady

March 2, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 2, 2021 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- In a statement Tuesday responding to media inquiries about US president Joe Biden’s stated devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the bishops of Mexico expressed hope that public office holders would be enlightened by her.

“As the Mexican Bishops’ Conference we are proud that the Virgin of Guadalupe is so loved and appreciated everywhere, beyond the bounds of languages, cultures, and traditions. We wish that all those who hold public office allow themselves to be enlightened by Our Mother in their way of living and serving so that they know how to promote the highest values that give life to peoples, such as health and peace, justice, truth, solidarity, care for the earth, defense of the poor, and promotion of the marginalized,” the bishops said in a March 2 press note.

They said their statement was “in response to inquiries from the media about what was expressed by the President of the United States Joe Biden about his devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

Biden had cited Our Lady of Guadalupe and displayed his rosary in a conversation with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador March 1.

Biden, who is Catholic, claimed a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe from his previous travels to Mexico as vice president.

“During my visits, I got to know Mexico a little bit and its people, and paid my respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe. As a matter of fact, I still have my rosary beads that my son was wearing when he passed,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of the event.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness, not only of the Americas, but of unborn children.

Biden is the second Catholic U.S. president, and the U.S. bishops’ conference has noted the unique circumstance of having a Catholic president who is not inconsistent with Church teaching on topics such as immigration and fighting poverty, yet contradicts Church teaching on abortion, marriage, religious freedom, and gender ideology.

Biden has supported taxpayer-funded abortion and has pledged to sign the Equality Act, legislation the USCCB has warned would codify gender ideology in law and would “punish” objecting religious groups.

In a Jan. 20 statement for Biden’s inauguration, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles offered prayers for the new president and emphasized his own role as bishop in forming consciences, rather than in being a partisan.

Biden, warned the USCCB president, “has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

Abortion, said Gomez, “remains the ‘preeminent priority’” of the conference, as it “is a direct attack on life that also wounds the woman and undermines the family.”

Although Biden’s staff have referred to him as a “devout Catholic,” the USCCB’s pro-life chair has said they should stop using that term due to his support for abortion.

“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, in an interview with Catholic World Report published on Feb. 13.

Archbishop Naumann noted that “we bishops have the responsibility to correct him” for using the term. He added that Biden “is usurping the role of the bishops and confusing people” by calling himself a “devout Catholic” while opposing the Church’s teaching on life.


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