“The Pentecost event is marvelous,” Archbishop Óscar A. Romero exclaimed in his last celebration of Pentecost. “That miracle is being accomplished today
because what I am saying here in the Cathedral in San Salvador, these words
that I am proclaiming with my poor Spanish are being proclaimed in North
America in English by the preachers who are celebrating the Eucharist there.”
Romero reviewed several other places and languages, “French, in Canada and France”; “in
the dialects of our indigenous people by the missionaries who go into the
jungles of Colombia and Guatemala”; “in
Italian and the many African dialects.”
The “miracle”
will be repeated in a special way this Pentecost, when hundreds of thousands of
faithful will gather in two separate ceremonies, thousands of miles apart,
to celebrate two beatification ceremonies in two different continents:
·
On
Saturday March 23 Archbishop Romero will be beatified on the Vigil of Pentecost
in El Salvador, in Central America ,while;
·
The
same day in Kenya, Africa, Sister Irene Stefani (1891 – 1930) a missionary nun
who devoted herself to serving the people as a nurse will be beatified.
It is not
entirely unprecedented for two beatifications to occur the same day in
different parts of the world, but it is rare. The last time it happened was in
2012 when the Blessed Pierre-Adrien Toulorge was raised to the altars by
Cardinal Angelo Amato in France, while the Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo was
beatified in Rome by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi the same April 29th.
The story of
how Archbishop Romero and Sister Irene reached the altar together is a
providential coincidence. The cause of Sister Irene began in March 1984 with
the opening of the diocesan process that year and ended thirty years later with
the approval of a miracle in June last year. The cause of Archbishop Romero began
in March 1993 when the diocesan phase opened and ended with a martyrdom decree this past
February, twenty-one years later. In the case of Sister Irene, it will be 85
years since her death until her beatification; and in the case of Archbishop Romero
it will be 35. This is to be expected,
given that he is a martyr and thus receives an expedited process, while she is
a confessor.
If Archbishop
Romero has been favored by swiftness in his process, his disadvantage is that
the preparation of his ceremony was more rushed. In the case of Sister Irene,
the Vatican announced that her beatification would be on May 23 in September of
last year—with eight months lead time. In fact, Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect
of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was originally designated to lead
the beatification of Sister Irene in Kenya. When it was announced that the
beatification of Archbishop Romero would be the same day, the announcement left
only two months to prepare the ceremony for Romero, and forced the
beatification of Sister Irene to be celebrated by Cardinal Polycarp Pengo of
Tanzania.
Romero is a
martyr of the Gospel among the poor, while Sister Irene gave her life in
another way; while working as a nurse, she was infected with the illness of one
of her patients and died from it. There are also similarities between the two
ceremonies. Kenyan authorities have predicted that about 300 thousand faithful
will participate in the beatification of Sister Irene, while Salvadoran officials
say that 260 thousand will take part in the Romero beatification. In Kenya,
only 33% of the population is Catholic, but given the vastness of the country
that amounts to about 7 million faithful. That’s more than the total population
of El Salvador, 6 million, half of which is Catholic. As already mentioned, the
beatification of Sister Irene also had more time to be organized, although the
site is remote, and the state of the roads has been a challenge for the
organizers.
Finally, it
goes without saying that the two nations, both El Salvador and Kenya, will put
many needs at the feet of their new blesseds. El Salvador suffers from high
levels of violence because of criminal gangs that have put homicide rates at
levels equivalent to those of the armed conflict during the times of Archbishop
Romero. Kenya has had even more dramatic problems, such as the recent Islamist
attack on Christian university students that left 150 dead and 80 wounded,
which led to Bishop Anthony Muheria’s warning to “stop playing around” on the
issue of the persecution of Christians.
Archbishop
Romero and Sister Irene, intercede for your beloved peoples!
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