Evangelization and Cuba's "Virgin of Charity"

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Recently I posted a thread entitled “Learning Evangelization from a Mother” See HERE

Today I am posting an excerpt from another interview which also shows the relationship between Mary and the New Evangelization urged by Bl. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI:

…Cardinal Ortega: Now the pilgrimage of the Virgin of Charity is under way. I think it is paradigmatic of what the New Evangelization must be, as it is succeeding in a real public missionary course, with thousands of people who gather in the countryside, in cities, in Havana, which will be the culmination of this pilgrimage.

The number of people is extraordinary, as well as the profound attitude of faith, totally religious and of a Catholic matrix. As the Virgin passes through the streets, men kneel down on the pavement, people take out their cell phones and photograph the Virgin, they bless themselves and applaud spontaneously and cheer. There is a real spirit of Catholic piety in the heart of the Cuban, which is now manifested with a great inner liberation of all those sentiments.

ZENIT: In other words, faith has grown?

Cardinal Ortega: A journalist asked us a few days ago in Havana if Cubans’ faith has grown, because athletes thank God when they win a competition, they make the sign of the cross before beginning a sports event. In reality, it isn’t that it has grown but that it is now manifested, and perhaps this is where religious liberty has grown. A manifestation that at other times was considered as improper of the age in which we live. Something like what is happening today with European secularism. It will have other ways of being addressed but it also needs this liberation of that European secularism that makes people inhibited when it comes to the sacred.

ZENIT: And in the Jubilee Year of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre?

Cardinal Ortega: Now the bishops are announcing the Jubilee Year. Next year will be the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity in the north of Cuba. And we have said in our letter that there is a springtime of faith. Spring is a good expression, because there is a flowering when, in the coldness of winter, flowers bloom, when spring arrives. What is a young shoot opens up, which is the germination of something that is sown.(Underlining is mine)

Full interview is HERE