Vatican City, Mar 25, 2022 / 04:40 am
The Catholic Church’s consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Friday is a radical call to personal, ecclesial, and social conversion, a Vatican cardinal has said.
“I think that, beyond the specific form of a gesture, the Lord, and with him the Blessed Virgin Mary, look at the substance, the truth of the gesture and the spirit,” Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, said about the consecration.
In a March 25 interview with ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian partner agency, Piacenza said that “for our part, as men on the road, every act of consecration is — and must be — a radical call to personal, ecclesial and social conversion.”
The act of consecration, which the pope has asked the world’s bishops and Catholics to join in, will take place in St. Peter’s Basilica after a penitential service which begins at 5 p.m. Rome time. The consecration will take the form of a prayer invoking Mary’s intercession for the gift of peace.