Friday, February 1, 2008

The Divine Mercy devotion Is getting Bigger

John Allen has one other good piece that caught my eye in the National Catholic Reporter. It is called On Schönborn and the Divine Mercy devotion.

As a result of John Paul’s personal backing, the Divine Mercy devotion has become one of the most rapidly growing bits of spiritual practice in Catholicism. In Rome, for example, the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia was dedicated to the Divine Mercy devotion by John Paul, and today it’s routinely packed with devotees from across the world. (As Fr. Mauro Parmeggiani of the Rome diocese has noted, churches near St. Peter’s generally suffer from the competition, but not Santo Spirito.)
If more proof is needed, I offer the fact that on my last trip out to rural Western Kansas to visit my 93-year-old grandmother, I spotted a large billboard along the I-70 with the now-ubiquitous image of Jesus with rays of red and white radiating from his heart, under the slogan “Jesus, I Trust in You.” (As a footnote, it’s located not far from the locally famous billboard reading “One Kansas farmer feeds 129 people, plus you.”).


Good read. I shall do my part again this year to try to encourage people to avail themselves of it.

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