Pope Francis is expected in the Italian city of Matera, where the XXVII National Eucharistic Congress will end on Sunday, September 25, which brings together delegates from Italian dioceses, as well as bishops. The Italian Bishops’ Conference has decided to allocate 500,000 euros in favor of the victims of the floods in the Marche region.
Luca Collodi – Matera
The arrival of Pope Francis is scheduled for the morning of Sunday, September 25, at the school grounds in Matera, from where he will travel to the stadium ” XXI September “. This visit of the Holy Father, believes the mayor Domenico Bennardi, “can only bring joy, and represents one of those rare and precious occasions to come together as a community“. The Municipality of Matera will offer Francis three engravings representing the “Triumph of love, chastity and time“, made in 1974 by the master of contemporary art Luigi Guerricchio.
The celebration at the stadium will be accompanied by the city’s symphony orchestra, conducted by Maestro Carmine Antonio Catenazzo, with 500 choir members from the diocese coordinated by Father Vito Burdo. The local diocese will also offer the Holy Father an icon of the “Madonna della Bruna“, patron saint of the city for more than 600 years.
The Eucharistic Congress
In the “city of the Sassi“, European Capital of Culture in 2019, brings together about 800 delegates from 166 dioceses in Italy and about eighty bishops, who reflect on the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian and social life, with the main theme “Let’s rediscover the taste of bread, for a Synodal Eucharistic Church“. The meeting is promoted by the Italian Church and the Diocese of Matera-Irsina.
Speaking during the work of the National Congress, Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, said that the world cultivates “division, hatred; the prejudice of ethnic hatred, speech, nuclear weapons“. The Eucharistic bread, according to him, helps to “give taste to life and work in the big fieldof this world.
Mgr Gianmarco Busca, Bishop of Mantua, for his part, launched the proposal of a “journey of the bread, going from table to table“, he says, through the “tables of the Creation, of the house, of the altar, of the Church, of the city and of the Kingdom“. And thanks to the Eucharistic bread, we can rediscover the taste of life, underlined the Archbishop of Matera-Irsina Msgr. Antonio Giuseppe Caiazzo.
He who lives the Eucharist, he said,open your eyes, let your heart burn and hit the road like the disciples of Emmaus», recognizing the Risen Lord to build bridges of humanity, tracing paths of peace, banishing all forms of individualism and closure. Those who live the Eucharist, he adds, weave relationships of brotherhood, banishing all forms of war, especially that of wheat, therefore of bread, and that of energy.
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