23 september, 2011
Pilgrims from more than thirty countries took part in Fatima, Portugal, in the celebrations of October’s International Anniversary Pilgrimage.
Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, of Moscow, Russian Federation, presided over this pilgrimage. Upon his arrival in Fatima, he wrote the following message in the Guest Book of the Shrine: “It is with heartfelt gratitude that I come, as a pilgrim, to Fatima – Our Lady loves Russia and here we consecrate ourselves again to Her. Come, O Holy Spirit, come through Mary!”
Before his departure to Fatima, Archbishop Pezzi announced that he was coming to Portugal accompanied by three groups of pilgrims from Russia and that he was going to tell all pilgrims that the message of Fatima “is so timely, because it isn’t an ideological message – perhaps one contrary to another ideological message – but an interesting proposal made to another human being through one’s own experience”.
In his greeting words to pilgrims in the Little Chapel of Apparitions on the 12th, he stressed: “We are pilgrims on the way to a house…to the Father’s House. We ought to decide whether we want to be pilgrims on this Earth and, therefore, searching for God; searching Christ to adore Him wherever He calls us to follow Him or whether we want to remain vagrants, people without a goal, people who don’t respond to the Mystery of a God Who calls and, therefore, people who don’t know where they are going. To follow Christ by loving His Mother: this is the way to holiness, the way to life’s goal”.
In his homily during the Mass of the 13th, celebrated in the Prayer Area - attended by more than 85,000 pilgrims, it is estimated – Bishop Pezzi recalled “the need to convert”.
He also called the attention to the dangers when one lives without God: “”The more I live thinking about what I am in the eyes of the Lord, the more my life is transformed, while, if I forget that, I lose the strength to fight, to build and, finally, I lose the joy of living. It is not by chance that all totalitarian powers – and our recent history shows it tragically – have as their main to goal precisely this: to remove from people’s minds the living memory of their past history, specially when this history is full of the religious dimension”.
ARCHIVE
The Archbishop of Moscow, Russian Federation, presides over the Anniversary Pilgrimage of October 12/13. The theme of the pilgrimage will be: “Here I am, Lord!”
Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, in short declarations from Moscow to the Shrine of Fatima, speaks of his trip to Fatima as if it were a discovery: “The invitation to take part in the annual pilgrimage of October to the Shrine of Fatima made me feel very grateful, because this invitation made me realize that I may be able to discover for myself and for our Church in Russia the call to conversion for the good of the world”.
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