The Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord, celebrated on Sunday 12 January on the banks of the River Jordan, marked the end of the Christmas period and the start of ordinary time. With the end of the Christmas festivities and the celebrations of the Epiphany in Bethlehem in the past few days, the Franciscan community once again gathered at Qasr al-Yahud, the place traditionally identified as the site of Jesus’s Baptism. Accompanied by the Custody’s Vicar, Fra Ibrahim Faltas […]
There is no pilgrim who has not lingered to gaze, at least in the last three centuries, at the painting which dominates the upper part of the Edicule of the Holy Sepulchre, above the low door which leads to the chapel of the Angel. It is the Resurrection of Christ, oil on canvas, without any doubt the work of Paolo De Matteis, the painter born in Piano Vetrale di Orria, today in the province of Salerno (Italy), and dated to […]
Maria de Lurdes Nunes, who was affectionately called Lurdinha by her friends, a journalist at the Christian Media Center and a missionary of Canção Nova, passed away on Friday 6 December, at the age of 64, after years of a battle against a tumour. She had returned to Brazil only a few weeks ago and a few days ago she was taken to the hospital of Barra Mansa (Rio de Janeiro). She died at 12 noon, reciting the prayer of […]
The first stage of formation for a Franciscan friar of the Holy Land passes through the convent of Montefalco, a small Italian village in the province of Perugia. Everyone who wants to become a friar in the service of the Holy Land spends a whole year in the convent which is only a few miles from Assisi, before entering the Novitiate, which will be spent in the convent of La Verna. In Montefalco the friars work on improving their Italian […]
