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UNITED KINGDOM: Carfin Pilgrimage shows Scotland's support for the suffering Church
By By John Newton
Pilgrims taking part in the Rosary procession around Carfin Grotto
The suffering of Christians around the world was the focus of Aid to the Church in Need’s first pilgrimage to Scotland’s national Marian shrine on Saturday, 22nd May.
Up to 120 people attended the pilgrimage to Carfin Grotto in Motherwell – including 30 pilgrims who journeyed 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.
And, after such a successful first pilgrimage to Carfin, organiser Dermot Lamb said he hoped it would become an annual event.
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 Dr 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 is 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.
Focusing on the sacrifice of the martyrs in his homily, he 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.”
Father Morton went on to say that there is always a cost to living out the Faith, regardless of whether or not it leads to martyrdom.
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.