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Pope Francis, through a decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has inscribed the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto into the General Roman Calendar.
The decree notes that the Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto, venerated by generations of pilgrims and honored by numerous popes, “recalls the mystery of the Incarnation, leading all those who visit it to consider ‘the fullness of time,’ when God sent his Son, born of a woman, as well as to meditate both on the words of the Angel announcing the Good News and on the words of the Virgin in response to the divine call."
The Congregation also published the liturgical texts for the memorial, which will be celebrated each year on December 10.
In March, on the feast of the Annunciation, Pope Francis went to visit Loreto, reflecting on how within those very walls on the feast celebrated that day, Mary gave her yes to invitation expressed by the Angel Gabriel.
He went on to reflect about Loreto in the lives of the young, families, and the sick, and signed Christus Vivit there.
- Here the Virgin Mary, the young woman full of grace, continues to speak to the new generations, accompanying each person in the search for his or her own vocation.
- In the delicate situation of today’s world, the family based on the marriage between a man and a woman assumes an essential importance and mission. It is necessary to rediscover the plan drawn up by God for the family, to reiterate its greatness and irreplaceability in the service of life and of society. In the house of Nazareth, Mary lived the multiplicity of family relations as daughter, betrothed, wife and mother. For this reason every family, in its different members, finds here acceptance and inspiration to live its own identity.
- Here those who suffer in the body and in the spirit may find welcome, and the Mother brings to all the Lord’s mercy from generation to generation. Sickness wounds the family, and the sick must be accepted within the family. Please, do not fall to that throwaway culture that is proposed by the many ideological colonisations that attack us today. The house and the family are the first cure for the sick, in loving them, supporting them, encouraging them and taking care of them.
