Beatification and canonization news for August

Funds needed

The cash-strapped canonization cause for Bl. Joseph Vaz has issued an appeal for donations. According to Asia News, Bishop Fernando Vianney of Kandy, president of the bishops’ Secretariat which deals with the canonization cause explained the Secretariat has submitted miracles to the postulator general, but the process of canonization of Bl. Joseph is at a “critical” stage.

To find out more, fill out the form at this page: http://www.kandydiocese.net/contact/

You can send donations to:

Bl. Joseph Vaz Secretariat

Bishop’s House

873 Peradeniya Road

Kandy, Sri Lanka

Sanctuary of Bl. Joseph Vaz

413, Sancoale

P.O.

Cortalim

403710 Goa

India

Guatemalan pilgrimage

To help promote the canonization cause of the Servant of God Fr. Stanley Rother, 38 pilgrims from Arkansas and Oklahoma journeyed to the small village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala for the 30th anniversary of his death. On July 28, 1981, he was shot in the rectory of the parish here that he served for the last 13 years of his life.

According to the Little Rock diocesan newspaper Arkansas Catholic, Fr. Rother “was a farm boy from an ordinary town in western Oklahoma. He struggled as a student in his first year of studies at the seminary. He served the first five years of his priestly ministry without much notice in a series of little known Oklahoma towns. Then everything changed when Father Rother answered the call to serve at the mission in Guatemala, finding his heart’s vocation as a missionary to the Tzutuhil people.

“Rother was only 46 when he was shot to death in his rectory. “Padre Apla’s” as he was called in Tzutuhil, was so beloved by the people of Santiago Atitlan that they requested permission to remove his heart before his body was returned for burial to Okarche, Okla. His heart, both figuratively and literally, will always remain with his beloved Tzutuhil as part of the church’s altar.”

New Doctors in the offing?

Not counting St. Juan de Avila, who is a shoe-in, 17 saints are under consideration for declaration as doctors of the Church. According to the Chiesa website of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the candidates include six women: St. Veronica Giuliani, St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Gertrude of Helfta, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Bl. Julian of Norwich.

Besides St. Juan, the men include: St. Gregory of Narek, St. John Bosco, Ss. Cyril and Methodius, St. Lorenzo Giustiniani, St. Antonino of Florence, St. Thomas of Villanova, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Louis-Marie Grunion de Montfort, and St. Bernardino of Siena.

Saint once was lost but now is found

In early August, a lead container was uncovered thought to contain remains of St. Edburg, who was the daughter of a pagan King and born in around 620 AD.

According to the UK paper Daily Mail, "St Edburg was a nun at Castor, Northamptonshire, under her sister St Cuneburga, before building a monastery on land given to her by her father King Penda of Mercia.

She died in 650 AD and from 1182 her relics were kept at Bicester Priory, Oxfordshire, until 1500 when Pope Alexander VI ordered her remains to be removed and relocated to Flanders in Belgium."

The tomb was located when construction workers had made excavations for a large redevelopment project in Bicester, England.

Mass for the “Grunt Padre”

Finally, on Tuesday, September 6, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the US Archdiocese for the Military Services will celebrate a memorial Mass in the crypt church at Washington, DC’s Basilica of the National Conception for the Servant of God Vincent R. Capodanno, a Maryknoll Father and Navy chaplain who was killed performing his duties for soldiers in Vietnam.