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(Vatican Radio) Catholics from around Scotland will mark the centenary of the first Fatima apparitions this weekend at their national Marian shrine.

Scottish Catholics will gather at Carfin Grotto on Saturday 13th May 2017 to join Catholics around the world in celebrating the 100th anniversary since the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared several times to three shepherd children in 1917. The first apparition occurred on 13th May, which has since become the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.

Pope Francis will celebrate Mass in Fatima on Saturday 13th May. During Mass, he will preside over the canonization ceremony of Blessed Francisco Marto and Blessed Jacinta Marto, two of the children to whom Our Lady appeared. The pilgrimage is expected to attract up to one million of the faithful.

At Carfin, the faithful will celebrate Mass to mark the canonizations. Afterwards, they will form a Rosary Procession that will move towards the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. In the evening, there will be a Torchlight Rosary Procession and a second Mass, celebrated by Bishop John Keenan of the Diocese of Paisley. The sacrament of reconciliation will also be available before and after the procession and Mass.

Carfin Grotto is the national shrine in Scotland dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes. It was established in the early twentieth century in a small mining village in the West of Scotland. Following a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the parish priest in Carfin, Father Thomas Taylor, made it his life’s work to establish a memorial shrine to Our Lady based on the shrine at Massabielle.

Father Taylor encouraged the locals to help his vision become a reality. He gave many coal miners something to focus on during the Coal Miners’ Strike of 1921. It is said that Father Taylor was aware of the need to counter the effects of unemployment on the morale of the people.

Almost immediately, Catholics from around Scotland began to flock to Carfin to honour the Blessed Virgin. Two years after it opened, Father Taylor recorded a single pilgrimage of over fifty thousand pilgrims in 1924.

The grotto has undergone several developments since its early days. Now, Carfin is home to several chapels and many more statues, a reliquary and a pilgrimage centre. The All Saints Reliquary Chapel houses one of the largest collections of relics outside of Rome.

Within the grotto, the ‘Glass Chapel’ of Our Lady, Maid of the Seas is particularly well-known among the Scots. The chapel was used at the famous Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988 and was later relocated to Carfin. It was then dedicated to the victims of the Lockerbie Disaster, when 270 people died after a bomb brought a plane down over Scotland.

• Stay connected with Vatican Radio to follow the events of Pope Francis’ pilgrimage to Fatima, where Chris Altieri will be reporting from Friday 12th May until Saturday 13th May 2017.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said the life of every Christian is a journey and a process during which to deepen the faith.

Speaking during the homily at morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta, the Pope reflected on the liturgical reading of the day in which St. Paul tells the story of Salvation leading up to Jesus.

During the course of history, Pope Francis said, many of our conceptions have changed. Slavery, for example, was a practice that was accepted; in time we have come to understand that it is a mortal sin.

“God has made himself known throughout history” he said, “His salvation” goes back a long way in time. And he referred to Paul’s preaching in the Acts of the Apostles when he tells the God-fearing children of Israel about the journey of their ancestors from the Exodus from Egypt until the coming of the savior, Jesus.

The Pope said salvation has a great and a long history during which the Lord “guided his people in good and in bad moments, in times of freedom and of slavery:  in a journey populated by “saints and by sinners” on the road towards fullness, “towards the encounter with the Lord”.

At the end of the journey there is Jesus, he said, however: “it doesn’t end there”.

In fact, Francis continued, Jesus gave us the Spirit who allows to “remember and to understand Jesus’ message, and thus, a second journey begins.

Slavery and the death penalty were once accepted; today they are considered mortal sins

This journey undertaken "to understand, to deepen our understanding of Jesus and to deepen our faith” serves also, Francis explained, “to understand moral teaching, the Commandments.”

He pointed out that some things that “once seemed normal and not sinful, are today conceived as mortal sins:

"Think of slavery: at school they told us what they did with the slaves taking them from one place and selling them in another…. That is a mortal sin” he said.

But that, he said, is what we believe today. Back then it was deemed acceptable because people believed that some did not have a soul.

It was necessary, the Pope said, to move on to better understand the faith and to better understand morality. 

And reflecting bitterly on the fact that today “there are no slaves”, Pope Francis pointed out there are in fact many more of them…. but at least, he said, we know that to enslave someone is to commit a mortal sin.

The same goes for the death penalty: “once it was considered normality; today we say that it is inadmissible” he said.

The people of God are always on a journey to deepen their faith

The same concept, he added, can be applied to “wars of religion”: as we go ahead deepening our faith and clarifying the dictates of morality "there are saints, the saints we all know, as well as the hidden saints." 

The Church, he commented, “is full of hidden saints”, and it is their holiness that will lead us to the “second fullness” when “the Lord will ultimately come to be all in all”.

Thus, Pope Francis said "The people of God are always on their way”. 

When the people of God stop, he said, “they become like prisoners in a stable, like donkeys”. In that situation they are unable to understand, to go forward, to deepen their faith - and love and faith do not purify their souls.

And, he said, there is a third “fullness of the times: ours”.

Each of us, the Pope explained, “is on the way to the fullness of our own time. Each of us will reach the moment in which life ends and there we must find the Lord. Each of us is on the go.”

“Jesus, he noted, has sent the Holy Spirit to guide us on our way” and he pointed out that the Church today is also on the go.

Confession is a step in our journey on the way to meet the Lord

Pope Francis invited the faithful to ask themselves whether during confession there is not only the shame for having sinned, but also the understanding that in that moment they are taking a “step forward on the way to the fullness of times”.

“To ask God for forgiveness is not something automatic” he said.

“It means that I understand that I am on a journey, part of a people that is on a journey” and sooner or later “I will find myself face-to-face with God, who never leaves us alone, but always accompanies us” he said. 

And this, the Pope concluded, is the great work of God's mercy.

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About 41 young Catholics from eight dioceses of Bangladesh are participating in the 25th National Writers Workshop organized by the Catholic Bishop’s Commission for Youth and the Christian Communication Center from May 9-13.   

Over the past 25 years the program has created prominent writers and journalists from Christian communities, said Holy Cross Bishop Lawrence Subrato Howlader of Barishal, chairman of the commission.

The aim of the workshop is to inspire future writers and journalists from Christian community who can use the power of writing based on Christian values and justice to build up a better community and society," the prelate said.

Partha Shankar Saha, a senior subeditor with Bangladesh's leading Bengali daily Prothom Alo encouraged participants to fight for truth and justice. "A journalist must be honest and always in favor of justice and it is their duty to shine a light on social discrepancies. Minority communities, especially indigenous people, face unjust situations and by taking up writing they can fight for rights and justice," said Saha, one of the trainers.

Asim Roy Tripura, a graduate student from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, said he was encouraged to write the problems faced by indigenous peoples. "Now I can write for newspapers about the violations against poor and marginalized indigenous communities who face systematic violence," Roy said.

The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) estimates there are 3 million indigenous people from at least 54 different ethnic groups speaking 35 different languages in Bangladesh. The indigenous population has suffered a great deal in the past.  The Church in Bangladesh is making efforts to train the future writers to be able to fight for truth and justice.   (UCAN)

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Caracas, Venezuela, May 11, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Garbage dumps have become “a regular place for people to eat” in Venezuela, says a local priest lamenting the nation's increasingly dire economic and political crisis.

“There's a lot of suffering,” Fr. Victor Salomon, a priest who works in the Archdiocese of Caracas, told CNA.

“This has been something commonly seen. It is really something very painful because the people are really in great need.”

Riots have spiked in Venezuela in recent years, resulting from unemployment, food and medicine shortages, and President Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian policies.

Price controls in 2003 caused inflation rates to sky rocket on basic necessities, baring the access of food and medicines to the people. Poor socialist policies have effected an estimated 160 products, and while they remain affordable on the shelf, they are soon swept off and sold on the black market at a triple digit inflation rate.

Violent riots have fluctuated since the death of the previous president Hugo Chavez in 2013, but gained even more traction after opposition leaders were arrested last year and Maduro's attempt for more power by dissolving the legislature in March of this year.

Speaking to CNA, Fr. Salomon said that repression has intensified since President Maduro announced the convocation of a Constitutional Assembly.

In that regard, he said that “some very painful scenes have come out, for example armored vehicles running over some of the protesters, or even people from the National Guard with a repression never seen before, firing at point blank range at those who are protesting. It's really very painful.”

The priest said that Venezuelans do not want more violence, shortages or “more violations of the constitution and human rights.”

Pope Francis recently sent a message to the country's bishops, urging them to continue promoting a culture of encounter.

“Dear brothers, I wish to encourage you to not allow the beloved children of Venezuela to allow themselves to be overcome by distrust or despair since these are evils that sink into the hearts of people when they do not see future prospects,” the Pope said May 5.

“I am persuaded that Venezuela's serious problems can be solved if there is the desire to establish bridges, to dialogue seriously and to comply with the agreements that were reached.”

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Vatican City, May 11, 2017 / 03:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Wednesday evening, just two days ahead of his trip to Fatima, Pope Francis sent a video message to the people of Portugal asking them to be with him during his pilgrimage, whether physically or spiritually, as he presents flowers to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“I need to feel your closeness, whether physical or spiritual; the important thing is that it come from the heart. In this way, I can arrange my bouquet of flowers, my ‘golden rose,’” he said in the May 10 video message.

“I want to meet everyone at the feet of the Virgin Mother.”

In the message, Pope Francis said he had received many messages asking him to come to people’s homes, communities and towns during his visit, but that he was not able to accept, as much as he would like to.

He also thanked the various Portuguese authorities for being understanding about his decision to restrict his trip to only the usual events associated with a pilgrimage to Fatima, such as praying the rosary at the prayer vigil and visiting the Chapel of the Apparitions.

“Only a few days remain before our pilgrimage, mine and yours, to the feet of Our Lady of Fatima,” he said. “These are days of joy in expectation of our encounter in the home of Mary our Mother.”

“It is as the universal pastor of the Church that I would like to come before the Madonna and to offer her a bouquet of the most beautiful ‘blossoms’ that Jesus has entrusted to my care (cf. Jn 21:15-17),” he continued.

And this means everyone around the world, “none excluded,” he explained. “That is why I need to have all of you join me there.”

“With all of us forming ‘one heart and soul’ (cf. Acts 4:32), I will then entrust you to Our Lady, asking her to whisper to each one of you: ‘My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God’ (Apparition of June, 1917).”

In the video, Francis called the meeting “our pilgrimage,” the motto for which is ‘With Mary, a pilgrim in hope and in peace.’ The program for the visit contains many opportunities for prayer and conversion of heart, he said.

“I am happy to know that in anticipation of that blessed moment, the culmination of a century of blessed moments, you have been preparing yourselves by intense prayer,” he noted. “Prayer enlarges our hearts and makes them ready to receive God’s gifts. I thank you for all the prayers and sacrifices that you offer daily for me. I need them, because I am a sinner among sinners.”

Through prayer, he said, he receives light to his eyes, which “enables me to see others as God sees them, and to love others as he loves them.”

Pope Francis makes the two-day pilgrimage to Fatima May 12-13 to celebrate the centenary of Mary's appearance to three shepherd children in 1917.

During the trip, the Pope will also celebrate Mass, presiding over the canonization of two of the child visionaries, Francisco and Jacinta Marta.

“In his name, I will come among you and have the joy of sharing with everyone the Gospel of hope and peace,” he concluded his message. “May the Lord bless you, and the Virgin Mother protect you!”

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Fatima, Portugal, May 11, 2017 / 05:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The niece of Fatima visionary Sr. Lucia dos Santos said her aunt was a normal person like everyone else, but shared some personal advice that her saintly relative used to give: to pray at least something every day.  

“She always asked me to pray the rosary every day, because there were many who did not pray,” Maria dos Anjos, niece of Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos, told CNA in an interview.

“This was what Our Lady asked: that we pray the rosary every day. Because there were many who didn't pray and because of this many souls went to hell because there was no one to pray for them,” she said.

Anjos, who only saw her aunt when they went to visit her in the convent, said the advice Lucia always gave her was to pray daily, and “that I not forget.”

She recalled that in a few of the conversations she had with her aunt, she confessed to not finishing the rosary because she was tired, having worked hard in the fields all day.

In response, Lucia didn’t reproach, but instead told her to “always start it, and if you don’t finish, Our Lady will finish it.”

Anjos, 97, is the daughter of one of Lucia’s older sisters. She grew up in the house directly across the street from where Lucia and her family used to live, and continues to live there with one of her sons today. Every evening she can be seen sitting on the front porch area with a rosary in hand.

While now there are paved streets and cars driving past the houses and tourist shops set up near Lucia’s house, which is now preserved as a museum and is open to the public for visits, Anjos said that when she was growing up, “there wasn’t anything here...just a mountain and some sheep and donkeys.”

Although she was only one year old at the time Lucia entered the convent, Anjos said her family would go to visit whenever they could.

Lucia, she said, “was a sister like the others. There was no difference. She was just like the other sisters who were in the convent,” and was always “joyful” – both as a child and as a religious sister.

Recalling memories that her mother had shared of her and Lucia’s childhood, Anjos said Lucia was a normal child like everyone else, and never lacked playmates.

“Many children came to play with her because their parents went to the wine estates and left their children here, because there was always someone at the house of Lucia’s mother who looked after the kids,” Anjos said.

Her grandmother and mother to Lucia, Maria Rosa Farreira, was catechist, and would also teach the children who came to the house while their parents were away.

Faith was always a big part of their family, even before the apparitions, Anjos said, explaining that “we always prayed the rosary, we went to Mass every Sunday, we did what we saw that could be done.”

After the apparitions of Mary, “we continued, doing more, and remembering that Our Lady asked us to pray more and to make more sacrifices,” she said, jesting that “we do our homework well.”

She recalled being able to attend Mass with Pope John Paul II during one of his three visits to Fatima, saying she was able to receive communion from him alongside her aunt, Sister Lucia.

“When communion came, I received communion from his hands, from the hands of the Holy Father. I liked it a lot,” she said, adding “you always like good things, do you not?”

Though she wasn’t able to speak with John Paul, Anjos said she was still “very happy,” and is equally content to welcome Pope Francis during his May 12-13 visit for the centenary of the Fatima apparitions.

During the visit, Francis will also canonized the two other Fatima visionaries – Francisco and Jacinta Marto – who were Lucia’s younger cousins, but died shortly after the apparitions took place.  

“I am very glad they will be canonized,” she said, explaining that in her and her family’s mind, the siblings were already saints. Though it will now become official, she said she believes devotion to them will be “the same,” since people had already viewed them as holy.

While she’s sad she won’t be able to attend this Mass personally, Anjos said she’ll be watching it on TV, which she said is enough to make her happy.

Noting an uptick in visits to the shrine, Anjos said that many people, her family included would pray the rosary and visit the shrine after the apparitions, but “it seems that we have more devotion.”

“I think that faith has increased here and in the whole world,” she said. “At least I think it has, because many people come here, and that’s why we have to (pray) more and more. I think it did a lot of good for people to have Our Lady appear here.”

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