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Two parishes showcase saint’s relic
Romo’s story comes with degree of controversy
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcsi...318&Ref=AR&MaxW=570&MaxH=370&title=1&border=0
By Jennifer Torres
Record Staff Writer
June 18, 2011 12:00 AM
STOCKTON - In stories that have fueled passionate devotion within immigrant communities, an apparition of St. Toribio Romo appears to distressed Mexicans making the dangerous crossing into the United States, offering them help and delivering them safely.
Canonized in 2000, Romo - a young Mexican priest who was killed during a time of violent religious persecution - has come to be revered as an unofficial patron saint of immigrants, bringing prominence, and controversy, to his story.
This weekend, a relic of Toribio Romo - a piece of his anklebone housed inside a statue - will visit two parishes in the Diocese of Stockton as part of a tour that already has wound through the Bay Area.
“Even though the object itself doesn’t have supernatural powers, in some way it still carries the reminder that the person was with us, body and soul,” said the Rev. Dean McFalls of St. Mary of the Assumption Church in downtown Stockton. “It just carries a sense of that person’s presence.”
Many believers say contact with objects closely associated with holy people can bring healing and assistance.
Toribio Romo was born in 1900 in a small town in the Mexican state of Jalisco. He was ordained in 1922, but by 1927, in the period of anti-religious sentiment that followed the Mexican Revolution, he was ordered to stop celebrating Mass.
He didn’t, and in 1928, he was killed by government soldiers.
Romo’s reputation as a protector of undocumented immigrants grew during the 1990s when stories began to circulate of a mysterious man who would find migrants stranded and desperate in the Arizona desert and lead them to safety.
According to the story, when the grateful people asked how they could thank him, the man would invite them to visit his hometown, Santa Ana de Guadalupe. When they got there, they would see images of the man who had helped them - Toribio Romo - at his village chapel.
Today, thousands of immigrants flock to that chapel, praying and begging the saint’s protection as they prepare to cross into the United States.
Full article:
recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110618/A_NEWS/106180318/-1/RSS02
Romo’s story comes with degree of controversy
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcsi...318&Ref=AR&MaxW=570&MaxH=370&title=1&border=0
By Jennifer Torres
Record Staff Writer
June 18, 2011 12:00 AM
STOCKTON - In stories that have fueled passionate devotion within immigrant communities, an apparition of St. Toribio Romo appears to distressed Mexicans making the dangerous crossing into the United States, offering them help and delivering them safely.
Canonized in 2000, Romo - a young Mexican priest who was killed during a time of violent religious persecution - has come to be revered as an unofficial patron saint of immigrants, bringing prominence, and controversy, to his story.
This weekend, a relic of Toribio Romo - a piece of his anklebone housed inside a statue - will visit two parishes in the Diocese of Stockton as part of a tour that already has wound through the Bay Area.
“Even though the object itself doesn’t have supernatural powers, in some way it still carries the reminder that the person was with us, body and soul,” said the Rev. Dean McFalls of St. Mary of the Assumption Church in downtown Stockton. “It just carries a sense of that person’s presence.”
Many believers say contact with objects closely associated with holy people can bring healing and assistance.
Toribio Romo was born in 1900 in a small town in the Mexican state of Jalisco. He was ordained in 1922, but by 1927, in the period of anti-religious sentiment that followed the Mexican Revolution, he was ordered to stop celebrating Mass.
He didn’t, and in 1928, he was killed by government soldiers.
Romo’s reputation as a protector of undocumented immigrants grew during the 1990s when stories began to circulate of a mysterious man who would find migrants stranded and desperate in the Arizona desert and lead them to safety.
According to the story, when the grateful people asked how they could thank him, the man would invite them to visit his hometown, Santa Ana de Guadalupe. When they got there, they would see images of the man who had helped them - Toribio Romo - at his village chapel.
Today, thousands of immigrants flock to that chapel, praying and begging the saint’s protection as they prepare to cross into the United States.
Full article:
recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110618/A_NEWS/106180318/-1/RSS02