The diocese of Coimbra has concluded its phase of the Cause of Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who saw Our Lady of Fatima in 1917.
Bishop Virgilio Antunes of Coimbra formally closed the local phase of investigation into her life and holiness last week in the Carmelite convent of St Teresa in Coimbra, where she lived until her death in 2005 at the age of 97.
The ceremony included the sealing of 15,000 pages in 50 volumes of evidence and witness testimonies detailing the life of Sister Lucia. The documents will be sent to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
After a thorough review of the materials and a judgment that Lucia lived the Christian virtues heroically, her Cause still would require the recognition of two miracles attributed to her intercession.
The Marian apparitions at Fatima began on May 13, 1917, when 10-year-old Lucia, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, reported seeing the Virgin Mary. The apparitions continued once a month until October 13, 1917, and later were declared “worthy of belief” by the Church.
Fr Romano Gambalunga, postulator of the Cause, said that while Lucia is already a saint in the eyes of many people, “the prudent path of the Church is that she is proposed to all, not just those who believe”.
“Lucia became holy over the years, not because of the apparitions,” Fr Gambalunga told Church news agency Agencia Ecclesia. Without providing details, he said she had a “spiritual experience” in the convent.
The evidence gathered for her Cause, he said, provides “a great occasion for spiritual and theological deepening”, and will help “illuminate the history of the Church over the last 100 years”.
Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Fatima in May and many people hope he will use the occasion to canonise Sister Lucia’s cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, who were beatified by St John Paul II in 2000.
Priest asks for prayers for thief who assaulted him
Franciscan Fr Ed Mundwiller has asked for prayers for a teenager who assaulted him in his home neighbourhood of St Louis, Missouri.
Fr Mundwiller said he asked God at his silver jubilee almost a decade ago to keep calling him outside his comfort zone, into places he never thought he would go. That is exactly what he thinks happened.
The incident occurred after he spoke briefly to a teenager and gave him a dollar. The boy followed him into an alley and attacked him, pummelling his face and breaking his leg while trying to get his wallet. Fr Mundwiller was taken to hospital where he was treated and released pending surgery to mend a fractured bone.
“We all have our days,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some days, we’re the hammer; some days, we’re the thumb.”
His doctor said he would probably need “a little hardware” in his knee and won’t be able to put weight on it for about three months.
He asked: “Please pray for [the assailant] and everyone like him, the ones who for whatever reason fall through the cracks of our ministries and wind up feeling hopeless and invisible, those who need to have God’s mercy shown to them.”
Malick to release martyr biopic
A new film about the martyr Blessed Franz Jägerstätter could be released later this year, according to Variety magazine.
Radegund, directed by Terrence Malick, has attracted “large” interest from distributors, the magazine said. Blessed Franz, an Austrian farmer who refused to take up arms for the Nazis, was executed in 1943. He was beatified in 2007; his wife Franziska, who played a major part in strengthening Franz’s faith, was present at the ceremony.
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