Our Lady of Perpetual Succour 1866 - 2016 CSsR... Pilgrimage to Rome 25th - 30th April 2016 Part 1

I am confident that I speak for all who spent last week in Rome on our Pilgrimage to mark the 150th anniversary of the gift of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour to the Redemptorists, when I say that we have returned home with the sense that we were part of something very special. In the course of the week we would visit the four great basilicas of Rome and we began on the Monday evening at St Mary Major, where we celebrated our first Mass.

I think the joy of the pilgrims was expressed in the wonderful singing which rang round that basilica’s Sistine Chapel, where the acoustics were fantastic. We would return the following afternoon and join the procession with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop Peter Smith (Southwark), Bishop Ralph Heskett CSsR, Fr Michael Brehl CSsR (Redemptorist General) and bishops, clergy and people from all over the world.

A copy of the icon was solemnly carried the 300 yards down the Via Merulana to our Redemptorist church of St Alphonsus, where we celebrated our second Mass of the day having already had the privilege of celebrating our own pilgrimage Mass in the morning, at which Fr Ronnie McAinsh CSsR, the Provincial, preached, reminding us that our presence in Rome owed much to an early Redemptorist of our Province, Fr Edward Douglas CSsR…to be continued…