Totus Tuus - To Jesus through Mary.

To impel the beauty of the new evangelization – this is the charism of the Heralds of the Gospel; Its founder, Monsignor João Dias explains."The Heralds of the Gospel is a private association of faithful with a very special charism based essentially on three points: the Eucharist, Mary and the Pope."

The Heralds of the Gospel are an International Association of the Faithful of Pontifical Right, the first to be established by the Holy See in the third millennium, during a ceremony which occurred during the feast of the Chair of St. Peter (February 22) in 2001.

The Heralds of the Gospel strive to be instruments of holiness in the Church by encouraging close unity between faith and life, and working to evangelize particularly through art and culture. Their apostolate, which differs depending upon the environments in which they work, gives pride of place to parish animation, evangelizing families, providing catechetical and cultural formation to young people, and disseminating religious Iiterature.



Thursday 29 July 2010

Now is the time to prepare for Pope Benedict’s visit.



Despite the restricted access, as many Catholics as possible should make every effort to be physically present at some of the official events during the Papal visit (15-19 September 2010).

Surely Catholics in Britain will want to demonstrate their love and respect for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XIV, so it would be good to see a very large crowd waiting to welcome him at each venue.

And in future years, each of us will want to be able to look back on this First papal State visit to Great Britain and say: ‘I was there!”

Over the next 8 weeks, please devote special time to pray for the spiritual success of Pope Benedict’s visit. We must not underestimate the great power of prayer and of mortification. Our Blessed Lord surely expects all souls of good will to intensify their prayers for His Vicar on earth as he is about to visit Our Lady’s Dowry.

The official website for the visit may be found at: http://www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/

Cardinal Pell: It is impossible to understand the history of the West without Christianity


Cardinal George Pell is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. The post below refers to his remarks at the launch of the Institute of Public Affairs’ Foundations of Western Civilisation Program in Melbourne last week.


In 2002 an academic at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences spoke to a group of American tourists about the search for the cause of the success of the West all over the world. “Originally they thought the main reason was more powerful guns; then it was Western political systems, before considering the claims of the Western economic system. Finally, and I quote

“in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. . . . The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”


In the same year, Zhao Xiao, an official Chinese economist, wrote an article titled Market Economies With Churches and Market Economies Without Churches. “It made the obvious points that market economies promote efficiency, discourage laziness, force competition. They work and produce wealth. But, he pointed out, a market cannot discourage people from lying or causing harm and indeed may encourage people to be industrious in their efforts to harm others and pursue wealth by any means.

… Zhao writes: “These days Chinese people do not believe in anything. … A person who believes in nothing can only believe in himself. And self-belief implies that anything is possible – what do lies, cheating, harm and swindling matter?”

…. China today is not a democracy, but a militarily supported dictatorship where hundreds of millions do not participate in the increasing prosperity, and where a ruthless one child policy has been imposed for decades. When this policy was implemented in a society which prefers sons to daughters, and where modern technology now enables the sex of babies to be discovered before birth, the end result was the current sex ratio of 130 boys born for every 100 girls (the natural range is 103-06 boys for every 100 girls). By 2020 China will have 30 to 40 million more males than females 19 years or younger.

… China will also follow Russia, Japan and most of Europe into a demographic implosion, with growing numbers of old people and fewer and fewer young people to support them. But China (and indeed India) will do this long before a decent standard of living extends to all or even most of their populations.

…..The dark side of the Western tradition has to be acknowledged, ranging as it does from the revolutionary violence of the French Revolution through to the tyrannies of the twentieth century, Nazism and Communism. Pol Pot was trained by Parisian Stalinists and even Mao owed more to Stalin than to the example of any Oriental despot. But neither Nazism nor Communism should be listed as belonging to Western civilization, because they both hated the Judaeo-Christian God and substituted the law of the jungle for natural law. ...

My second and much happier qualification is to acknowledge gratefully the English speaking tradition of Western civilization to which I belong, the thought world of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens; Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin; Adam Smith and John Henry Newman; Edmund Burke, William Wilberforce and the Westminster system of government; English common-law and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. We all have many reasons for gratitude.

….. The two traditional lodestars of God and human nature were rejected, with consequences we are still trying to deal with now. These are the major sources of Western discontent today.

…. This rejection of human nature is at the heart of radical versions of autonomy, individualism and secularism. The propaganda is all about freedom: freedom to choose our own values, and to make and remake ourselves as we please. The reality is a moral relativism that makes evil a question of one’s particular perspective or feelings, and a world where human beings become means to others’ ends. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), with its dim-witted brutes bred for slaves, is still some way away. But our willingness to entertain breeding humans for spare parts (only up to a certain stage for the moment) shows how cheap life has become, and how we threaten to lose our bearings….

We need to introduce our children to Western civilisation through the teaching of philosophy, history and English literature, in solid rather than debased forms; and edge them towards considering the big questions: is there truth? what is goodness? can we believe in beauty? Knowledge is indispensable but it is never enough by itself. We need to re-present God and the insights about how we should live, which come from recognising our shared human nature. Christians need to challenge intellectually the many agnostics of good will to face up to the absence of alternatives. Teaching the foundations of Western civilisation is not an intellectual or aesthetic luxury. It is essential to building strong communities and to ensuring that [we develop] just and decent societies.

….. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed in his Templeton Lecture in 1983: “if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century . . . I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God

….As Czeslaw Milosz has pointed out, “a true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death-the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Calls by some to reject all religions have been amplified in the wake of Islamist terrorism. But not all religions are the same. Different faiths produce very different societies, as the Chinese specialists with whom we began are now teaching us. ..The biggest mistake that radical secularists and others have made over the last two centuries is to believe that religion is merely “a secondary phenomenon, which has arisen from the exploitation of human credulity.” It is impossible to understand the history of the West, or why the West became what it is, without Christianity….”

The complete article may be found at: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0157.htm

Saturday 17 July 2010

A talk about the Christian community in Iraq - Part 2




A talk about the Christian community in Iraq - Part 1





A talk about the situation of the Christian Community in Iraq - a community, which dates its origin back to St. Thomas the Apostle - was held at the home of the Heralds of the Gospel. The talk was given by Deacon Hani, SDP (from Iraq), and attended by 15 people.

At the start of 1991, just before the first Persian Gulf War, the Catholic population of Baghdad was counted at more than 500,000. By 2003, Catholics in Baghdad number about 175,000, and the number is decreasing annually. A Vatican official said in 2003, "It's like a biblical exodus, and with the threat of a new war, the remaining Catholics must be thinking very hard about packing their bags."

Since that time the situation has deteriorated even more, and we who live in a country where we may practice our Faith in safety are reminded to pray constantly for our brothers and sisters who are suffering so badly

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For further information, see also the following article from Zenit, and a recent online documentary about the lives of Iraqi Catholics:


ZE09110604 - 2009-11-06
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-27465?l=english

Iraqi Christians: Long History, Precarious Future Documentary Sends Cry for Help to the World By Genevieve Pollock

ARBIL, Iraq, NOV. 6, 2009 (Zenit.org).-

A new video documentary produced by Catholics in Iraq invites people to experience the history, culture, martyrs and struggles of one of the oldest Christian communities.

Hank and Diane McCormick, a missionary couple working in Northern Iraq, told ZENIT that the first episode of this five-part documentary can be viewed online by people worldwide who want to "meet" the Middle Eastern Catholics.

The video exposes stories about Christian martyrs of that region as well as Catholics -- bishops, priests and laypeople -- who are currently living there and working in schools, hospitals and other services. It incorporates scenes from the area's holy places, footage of ancient artifacts, glimpses of liturgical celebrations and local music.

Online viewing of first part of An Open Door: http://www.charityandjustice.org/index.php/cjhome/an-open-door

Thursday 8 July 2010

Memories of the Heralds of the Gospel's Visit to Malta - part 3







In the capital city of Valetta is the Church of St. Paul Shipwrecked, which depicts in sumptuous baroque murals every event of his life from the Bible. On the feast day of the shipwreck, February 10, its larger-than-life statue of St. Paul preaching is processed through city streets. The statue also was processed in 1798 in divine supplication as Napoleon's invasion fleet approached, and in 1960, when Malta celebrated the 1,900-year anniversary of St. Paul's arrival.

On one altar is enthroned a silver forearm encasing bones from the Apostle's hand. Ancient wax-sealed parchments affirm its authenticity. Another altar holds a three-foot-high marble pillar topped by a silver sculpture of a severed head. It was on this pillar that St. Paul was beheaded. In 1818 Pope Pius VII bequeathed it to the Shipwreck Church in gratitude for parishioners' heroic service during an outbreak of the plague.

Memories of the Heralds of the Gospel's Visit to Malta - part 2
















Memories of the Heralds of the Gospel's Visit to Malta - part 1






Recently the Brothers of the Heralds of the Gospel have spent five days carrying out their missionary apostolate in Malta. They had the opportunity to visit families and parishes, and were given a warm welcome by all they met. Above you will see a photographic record of their stay.

Malta is a Catholic country and it is mentioned in the New Testament where it ranks a full chapter - Acts 28. This is because St Paul in A.D. 60 was shipwrecked here, an event which changed this island forever.

Sunday 4 July 2010

Centenary of the Consecration of Westminster Cathedral


Westminster Cathedral was built in honour of the Most Precious Blood
This year marked the Centenary of the Consecration of Westminster Cathedral and the occasion was marked by a solemn Mass of thanksgiving at which Archbishop Vincent was the principal celebrant, Cardinal Cormac preached, and many priests from the diocese concelebrated.

The Mass included the prayer used in the rite of Consecration a hundred years ago which spoke of the Cathedral, ‘built in honour of thy Most Precious Blood’ and the two red pillars, immediately visible to the visitor entering the Cathedral, remind us of the Precious Blood.

The Letter to the Hebrews says: ‘how effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God.’

This is a most powerful devotion, and the dedication of the Cathedral to the Precious Blood is a reminder of the unstoppable love that flowed from Christ on the Cross, and flows from him still. At the very moment when the Roman soldier pierced the side of the dead Christ, and blood and water that flowed from his side, God’s plan of salvation was at work.

‘O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus, we trust in you!’

July is the month of devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus



"Since the value of the blood of the God-man, Jesus Christ, is infinite, and the love which moved him to shed it is infinite, it is not only fitting but highly proper that all those born again in its salutary torrents pay it the homage of adoration and grateful love." From the apostolic letter: Inde A Primis by Blessed John XXIII

Catholics have great devotion to the Precious Blood and there is a pious tradition of saying the following prayer throughout the day with our arms extended in the form of a cross.

Eternal Father,
I offer Thee
the precious blood of Jesus
in atonement for my sins,
for the Church,
for the conversion of sinners,
the souls in purgatory
and to promote devotion to His Sacred Passion.


We are encouraged to say this prayer as we go about our daily duties, offering to our loving Father the sacred Passion of His Son, extending the graces of the Holy Mass through out the day.

May our loving and compassionate High Priest intercede before the Father for us, our families, our homes, our nation, and the world.