Bishop Frank J. Caggiano of Bridgeport, Conn., leads Catholics in prayer Sept. 23 during the blessing of a new rosary walk and garden near the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The new prayer area features a statue of Our Lady of Fatima with the three shepherd children and the 20 mysteries of the rosary rendered in mosaic art. (CNS photo/Matthew Barrick)
By Julie Asher Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — Our Lady of Fatima’s message about prayer, conversion and peace that she imparted to three shepherd children in a field in Portugal “is as important now as it has ever been since” she appeared a century ago, a Connecticut bishop told Massgoers Sept. 23 in Washington.
“We come here to ask for her intercession,” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano of Bridgeport said in his homily at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. “She might lead every human heart to answer the question, ‘What is it that you are looking for?’ And we will answer it: ‘We are looking for your Son, and lead us to him.’”
The bishop was the main celebrant of the Mass, which drew a capacity crowd to the national shrine’s Upper Church. After Mass ended, Bishop Caggiano led a procession of concelebrants, deacons, altar servers and the congregation to a new rosary walk and garden near the shrine. As they walked, people recited aloud the joyful mysteries of the rosary.
People flooded into the garden — which on one side features a white Carrara marble sculpture of Our Lady of Fatima with the three child-visionaries at her feet, Lucia dos Santos and Jacinta and Francisco Marto. On the opposite side is the crucified Christ, sculpted from the same kind of marble.
The paved walkway, symbolic of the thread connecting a rosary’s beads, circles through and around the garden, taking visitors past groupings of colorful mosaics that illustrate the 20 mysteries of the rosary. Bishop Caggiano walked to the Fatima statue, then around the path, blessing the new garden as he went. He ended up back at the statue and led the crowd in prayer.
At the beginning of Mass, Msgr. Walter Rossi, rector of the national shrine, welcomed the congregation, noting the 2,000 pilgrims from the Diocese of Bridgeport in attendance, along with pilgrims from the Philippines and China, the New York area and the Washington region. Bridgeport’s diocesan youth choir sang for the Mass, which was broadcast live by the Eternal Word Television Network, CatholicTV of Boston and New Evangelization Television of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York.
Msgr. Rossi said it was the first pilgrimage from Bridgeport in about 15 years, adding that shrine officials were thrilled to see so many young people at “Mary’s shrine.” “I often say that our young people are the hope of the world and the church and they are the hope of Mary’s shrine,” the priest added.
Thanking donors who made the new garden and prayer walk a reality, he noted the project was an initiative put forward by Bishop Caggiano and Dr. Daisy Lin of Washington.
Opening his homily, Bishop Caggiano asked, “My friends, what are you looking for? What is it that you seek?” This “may sound like a strange question to ask on an occasion such as this and yet it seems to me that is the question that roots each of our lives,” he said.
“It is the reason that we have come here to this sacred place, and on this day of pilgrimage and prayer (it) affords us an opportunity to answer it again in your heart and mine in the mind of Christ,” he said.
Everyone at Mass had “made the sacrifice to break our ordinary routine” to come to the shrine, he said, but he was sure everyone there carried people in their heart — a family member or friend or neighbor — who “are confused … without direction, without joy, perhaps even without hope” because they listen to the modern world’s voices of secularism and materialism and are unable to find “the rock upon which they are to build their lives.”
