15th November 2011
For immediate release:
The incorrupt heart of St John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, is to be taken to a major annual national vocations discernment weekend in Birmingham during the first ever visit by the relic to Britain next year.
The heart, which is encased in a glass reliquary, will be taken to the third Invocation festival for young Catholics considering life as either a priest or a member of religious order or congregation following permission from the Most Rev. Bernard Longley, the Archbishop of Birmingham.
The vocations event, which next year will focus particularly on the priesthood and its role in the life of the Church, will be held at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham, from 6-8 July 2012. The organisers hope that the relic will be present at the festival during the morning of Sunday July 8 before the wider public may be given the opportunity to venerate the heart at the college later in the afternoon.
Father Stephen Langridge, the chairman of the Vocations Directors’ Conference of England and Wales, and an organiser of Invocation, said: “The presence of the relic of St John Vianney should encourage us all to reflect on the importance of the priesthood in Christian life.
“For any young man considering a priestly vocation the example of the parish priest of Ars is a reminder that he is called above all to union with Christ in prayer and also in self-sacrificing dedication to his people.
“St John Vianney used to say: ‘The priest is the heart of Jesus Christ.’ What is important for us is not only that the relic will be at Invocation but that through it we are put in contact with the example of a saintly priest and intercessor for all priests before God’s throne.
“Having taken groups of young pilgrims to Ars in the past I am very confident the presence of the relic will resonate with them in ways some older people along with a secularised world may find difficult to comprehend.
“But we shouldn’t be surprised that in a world which proposes the real absence of God there remains a deep yearning for His Real Presence and therefore the relic of St John Vianney’s heart can help us transcend the present to draw inspiration from eternity.”
The veneration of the relic at Invocation will form part of the programme being prepared for the four-day visit, which was agreed following a meeting of the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, and the Rt Rev. Guy Bagnard, the Bishop of Belley-Ars, France, in September.
The relic will also be taken to the Shrewsbury Diocese in the hope that its presence will mean an occasion of prayer for the renewal of the ministerial priesthood in the diocese, that it will inspire new and generous vocations, and that it will spur the renewal of the missions and life of all parishes in the diocese.
It will be accompanied by Bishop Bagnard along with two priests of the Ars diocese, where three seminarians for the Shrewsbury diocese are in training.