Hope sets off on its path: Nazareth reaches Latin America

On Monday 20 January, at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Custos of the Holy Land, Francesco Patton, celebrated Mass in front of a group of thirty-five pilgrims from Mexico.

At the end of the celebration, the Custos gave Fra Josè Alcaraz, commissary of the Holy Land for Mexico, a reliquary containing a fragment of stone from Mary’s home in Nazareth. This precious reliquary, to go on a pilgrimage to Mexico and other Latin American countries, has a wooden structure covered in mother-of-pearl. Designed by the architect Vincenzo Zuppardo, it was then made by the Piccirillo Centre in Bethlehem. At the end of the celebration, the Custos blessed small wooden crosses, giving them as a gift to the Mexican pilgrims.

Accompanying the relic on its pilgrimage there will also be a statue of the Virgin Mary, a reproduction of the one in the Basilica of Nazareth, produced on commission by the artist Santiago Ocampo Higuita.

In his homily (you can read the full text here) the Custos underscored the amazement that distinguishes Mary’s face who welcomes God into her life with humility and faith.

“The image that today we are blessing and which from here will start out on this pilgrimage to Latin America expresses in a particularly successful way the astonishment and faith of Mary. There is all the astonishment and joyous faith in her eyes and in the posture of her arms and hands of a woman who welcomes the Son of God into her womb.”

By custodia.org