Pilgrimage in honour of OMPH
Dear Brothers
Greetings from the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Madrid!
We – Marek Kotyński CSsR, Jorge Ambel Galan CSsR and Seamus Enright CSsR – last wrote to you on September 13th, 2015. We have been asked by the Conference of Europe, as you will remember, to organize a European celebration in honour of 150 years of Redemptorist devotion to OLPH. The event/pilgrimage will take place in Madrid from May 2nd – 7th, 2017.
We would like to remind you of what we wrote then: We decided not to organize a conference or a colloquium but an event, a ‘pilgrimage’ in honour of OMPH and to hold it here in Madrid…The event/pilgrimage will consist of theological and historical presentations, opportunities to pray together and to contemplate the Icon of OMPH in various contexts, sharing of personal, pastoral and missionary experiences. The programme will include a pilgrimage to Cuenca, in honour of our martyred Spanish brothers, and to Huete, where the Icon was first venerated in Spain.
We are writing now to update you on our continuing preparations. We are close to finalizing the programme and hope to be in a position to circulate it in the autumn.
We need your assistance with two items now:
(i) Every unit is being asked to nominate a member of the preparatory community, which will gather here in Madrid on April 28th, 2017 and will be responsible for the final preparations. Please let Marek have the name of your member of the preparatory community as soon as possible.
(ii) We would also like you to let us have an idea of the number of participants from your unit likely to participate in the event/pilgrimage (May 2nd – 7th, 2017). We are not looking for names or final numbers at this stage but an idea of the numbers likely to attend. This will help us with our planning, especially when it comes to arranging accommodation.
We hope that you will encourage maximum participation as the Conference of Europe celebrates 150 years of Redemptorist devotion to OLPH. We are hoping for a good spread of participants: Redemptorists, Redemptoristines, women and men, young and old. Please begin spreading the word about the event/pilgrimage in Madrid now.
We are investigating the possibility of ‘streaming’ the gathering as we want to promote maximum participation and believe that, as Redemptorists, we should use all the media that are at our disposal.
Our next meeting will take place in Madrid from June 13th to 15th. We will finalize the programme at that meeting.
Please feel free to email any of us with comments, observations and suggestions about the programme.
Fr. Marek Kotyński (kotynski@onet.eu)
Fr. Jorge Ambel Galan (yorchambel@yahoo.com)
Fr. Seamus Enright (seamusenrightcssr@gmail.com)
