Aid to the Church in Need Carfin Pilgrimage 2010

Pilgrims at Carfin carry a statue of Our Lady in a procession

22 May 2010 13:00

Carfin Lourdes Grotto
Taylor Avenue
Carfin
Motherwell
ML1 5AJ

More than 120 people took part in Aid to the Church in Need’s first pilgrimage to Scotland's national Marian shrine in Carfin on Saturday 22^ndMay.

Pilgrims gathered from across Scotland, and even from south of the border too, with 30 pilgrims journeying from the English diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.

The Carfin event was part of a Day of Prayer and Pilgrimage which saw pilgrims gather at the same time in Carfin and in Walsingham, the English National Shrine to Our Lady.

The pilgrimage took place amid reports of continuing acts of violence and intimidation in parts of the Middle East, Sudan and Pakistan.

The day began at 12pm with a Rosary procession around the grotto led by Aid to the Church in Need’s Scottish Secretary Doctorr John Watts and Area Secretary Una Delaney. For each decade of the glorious mysteries pilgrims prayed for persecuted Christians on a different continent.

For the Way of the Cross at 1.45pm a series of stations were used that were composed by Aid to the Church in Need’s international president, Father Joaquín Alliende.

Afterwards Aid to the Church in Need’s UK Director, Neville Kyrke-Smith, spoke about the charity’s work and the challenges being faced by the Church around the world.

He told pilgrims how Christians in Pakistan were being oppressed by the country’s punitive blasphemy laws. Aid to the Church in Need campaigned for the repeal of the laws last year.

Mr Kyrke-Smith also described how the charity was helping the Church in Ukraine to flourish after many decades of oppression under communism, by providing support for the country’s growing seminaries.

The day concluded at 3pm with a votive Mass for persecuted Christians, celebrated by Father Paul Morton. Father Paul is parish priest of Saint Bride’s Church in Cambuslang, Glasgow, and a member of the Aid to the Church in Need Board of Trustees.

He focused on the sacrifice of martyrs in his homily, and also spoke of how Aid to the Church in Need was “born from the smallest act of charity” when low-country farmers gave bacon to displaced Germans – who had recently been their enemies in the Second World War.

He told pilgrims: “Did not our Lord say that the Kingdom of God was like the smallest of seeds that will become the greatest of shrubs?

“The smallest act of love can be a seed sown in the ground which becomes great and mighty. Such has been the enterprise that we call Aid to the Church in Need.”

There was always a cost to living out the Faith, regardless of whether or not it led to martyrdom, added Father Morton.

Asking pilgrims to remember and pray for the suffering Church, he said: “Know also that their lives and sacrifices touch you, that in the mysterious power of God’s love through them gives you your strength and power to live out your faith also.”

Carfin’s Glass Chapel was open all day for exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The expansion of the charity’s events in Scotland follows the opening last September of an office of Aid to the Church in Need in Scott Street, Motherwell.

We hope this pilgrimage will become an annual event – so look out for announcements early in 2011.

If you would like to join us on a pilgrimage this year, there is still time to book your place on our Holy Land Pilgrimage in November.

http://www.carfin.org.uk/

Aid to the Church in Need Carfin Pilgrimage 2010

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