Saintly News...

The Congregation of Holy Cross is filled with excitement and gratitude in these summer days as we near the canonization of Blessed Andre Bessette, CSC, which will be in Rome on October 17th.

And we have recently received more wonderful news, this time regarding our founder, Blessed Basil Moreau, CSC. Here is the announcement made today by our generalate staff in Rome:

As religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross will enter their general chapter in a few days, I have some good news to share with you regarding the Cause of canonization of our Founder, Blessed Basile-Antoine-Marie Moreau. Exactly one week ago, on June 18, Archbishop Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, has signed the decree allowing the cause of Blessed Moreau to proceed to its roman phase (see attachment). This means that all the proceedings, testimonies and the inquiry done recently in Schillong has met the standards of the Congregation for the causes of saints and the cause can now go ahead. Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, our Postulator, has thus informed me today that he is ready to officially open the roman phase of the final inquiry on Thursday, July 1st. If all that is well, the Congregation of Holy Cross may have its second saint sooner than expected. Let us all rejoice!

Blessed Andre Bessette, pray for us!
Blessed Basil Moreau, pray for us!
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Mass With Marini...

Msgr. Guido Marini is in his third year serving the Holy See as Master of Apostolic Ceremonies. Recently he was a guest at the Bernardi Rome Campus of the University of St. Thomas. I was invited for a beautiful evening of Eucharistic adoration, vespers, a Mass celebrated by Msgr. Marini, a discussion, dinner and compline. My host was Mr. Karlo Leonor, a Notre Dame student who will enter the Old College seminary this fall and who was a resident of the Bernardi Campus this semester.
The Mass was celebrated in the Ordinary Form in Latin. I attended "in choir" and it was such a beautiful and prayerful liturgy. The prayer life and daily horarium of the students is most impressive. Aside from the Mass, a highlight was to listen to Msgr. Marini answer questions pertaining to liturgy, his vocation story, the role of music in the liturgy, and details about what it is like to be in such personal contact with the Holy Father.

After compline Karlo and I spoke with monsignor about the upcoming canonization of Blessed Bro. Andre Bessette, CSC and to thank him for his important service to the Church.

Here is a recent interview of Msgr. Marini by RomeReports:

June in Rome...

June has arrived and the pontifical schools are all in exam mode. This semester I have a total of six exams, all oral but one. The last remaining exam will be Monday evening, and thus will end my academic classroom work as a student. Well, that's not entirely true. I will be in the classroom this summer studying German and then in the Fall I have a weekly seminar to attend. But, the overall point is that in two days I end one big portion of my academic work and head into full-time writing of a dissertation.The photo was taken a couple of weeks ago with the students in the "Theology of the Eastern Anaphora" course taught by Fr. Ephrem Carr, OSB, a monk of St. Meinrad's Abbey, IN and who currently serves as the president of the school. You can see yours truly at the top left looking as happy as usual. The size of my classes vary one from another - this one being a bit larger than the others. Four Americans in this photo, the others are from lands near and far. The four women are huddled to the bottom-right.

PrayTellBlog...

Recently, I was asked to be a contributor to the blog PrayTellBlog.com. Created this past winter, the blog is envisioned to provide an electronic extension to the liturgical studies and scholarship and life as born out of St. John's University, Collegeville, MN. From the blog itself:

Welcome to Pray Tell, a blog that gives practical wisdom about prayer, sacraments, and the community of the faithful – in short, worship. Created especially for pastors, liturgists, musicians, and scholars, Pray Tell is informal, conversational, even humorous, but also – we hope – always well-informed and intellectually grounded.

I am honored to be asked and look forward to contributing with some regularity over the course of the upcoming year and adding what I can to the discussions that arise there. I encourage you to visit and engage as well.

A Good Read In this Year for Priests.....

The Year for Priests, proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, soon draws to a close. In a timely manner, Fr. Frederick Miller has published a series of his retreat conferences given over multiple trips to Ars, France. A professor at St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland, Fr. Miller has provided rich reflections upon St. Vianney and the spiritual lessons priests and laity alike can learn from the saintly model.

The book also contains the letter by which Pope Benedict declared the year, John Paul II's 1986 Holy Thursday letter, and Blessed John XXIII's encyclical Sacerdotii nostri primordia of 1959.