This past Saturday, August 12, Fr. Leo Camurati, O.P. celebrated a Missa Cantata in honor of Blessed Michael McGiveny in the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Raritan, NJ.
Diana Calvario shared these pictures:
13 Aug
2023
This past Saturday, August 12, Fr. Leo Camurati, O.P. celebrated a Missa Cantata in honor of Blessed Michael McGiveny in the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Raritan, NJ.
Diana Calvario shared these pictures:
26 Jul
2023
His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass in honor of Our Lady of She-Shan for Catholics in China yesterday evening at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist in Stamford, CT. The event was organized by the Cardinal Kung Foundation. A reception followed in the piazza after the Mass.
18 Jun
2023
In Greenwich, CT, the weekly Saturday 8 am Missa Cantata has been moved from St. Roch’s Church to a room in the school building next door. To find the Mass, enter the door facing St. Roch Avenue. The Mass is upstairs, down the hall.
12 Jun
2023
The Traditional Mass and processions for the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated around the tri-state area.
11 Jun
2023
30 Apr
2023
I have aleady written of the sombre, little-known funerary chapels of Paris. They commemorate the victims of political crimes and tragic accidents between 1789 and 1896. To these I must add Notre-Dame-des-Otages, dedicated to the memory of the hostages massacred by the Communards (the Commune was a proto-Communist movement) in 1871. Unlike the other chapels, however, the current church was built in the twentieth century and completed in 1938. It later became a fully functioning parish church.
Notre-Dame-des-Otages is situated in the Belleville district, far from the Parisian centers of business and tourism. Traditionally a poor area, I am told it has recently been “enjoying” gentrification. The church is located in the Rue Haxo, where most of the executions took place on May 26, 1871. The current structure replced a series of prior chapels dating back to 1889.
Located on a nondescript street, the facade does not make a very strong impression. The interior is one of the few attempts to employ the Art Deco style in ecclesiastical architecture. Although pleasant and interesting, I regret to say it reminded me somewhat of a subway station. An inscription encircles the main altar:
Sanguis Martyrum Semen Christianorum
This, and references on two plaques commemorating the dead of the wo world wars, are strangely enough the only allusions I could find to the rather unusual dedication of this church.
I gather the commemoration of these martyrs later became somewhat of a political embarrassment for the Church. After all, hadn’t thousands of Communards been massacred by the government in crushing their uprising? And aren’t communists some of the best Christians, as Dorothy Day and later Pope Francis have claimed? In any case it was only in this year 2023 that five of the martyrs were beatified, on Saturday, April 22nd in the church of Saint Sulpice (which is currently functioning as the Cathedral of Paris). Henri Planchat, Ladislas Radigue, Polycarpe Tuffier, Marcellin Rouchouze et Frézial Tardieu will be commemorated on May 26. But there were many more martyrs under the Commune between May 24 and 27 in 1871 – the most prominent of all being Archbishop Georges Darboy of Paris. He had been a resolute opponent of Ultramontanism – does this still count against him?
26 Mar
2023
From the Gospel of today – St. John v. 46 to 59:
“…Jesus autem abscondit se, et exivit de templo.”
3 Feb
2023
For the feast of Candlemas, February 2: mass, blessing of the candles and procession at the historic church of the Transfiguration on Mott Street.
21 Jan
2023
The feast of St. Agnes is January 21. The complex of ancient Christian buildings erected around her tomb from the time of Constantine to the 7th century is one of the most impressive sights in Rome.
(Above) The interior of the basilica. The columns were all taken from earlier Roman buildings. Note how those closest to the apse are of more splendid stone.
See Macadam, Alta (with Annabel Barber), Blue Guide Rome at 490-492(Somerset Books, London, Tenth Edition, 2010)
13 Dec
2022
Reliquary in the Cathedral of Syracuse, Italy – her home town.
(Above and below) Closer to home, the epic neo-baroque decoration of the Church of St. Lucy, Newark, NJ.
(For even more images from St. Lucy’s Church, see our report.)
(Above and below) Finally, tragically, two statues from the now-shuttered parish of St. Lucy in East Harlem (photos from 2014).