Your Eminences
Your Excellences
Re: The Celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the Arrival from Acapulco to the Philippines of the Image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Currently Enthroned at the San Sebastian Church
Peace!
This is to remind you of the invitation of the Augustinians Recollects of San Sebastian Church. They had invited all the Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops of the Philippines to join in the celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the arrival from Acapulco to the Philippines of the Image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel currently enthroned at the San Sebastian Church. This will take place in the early morning of 04 May 2018 with a Solemn Thanksgiving Mass at 6:30 A.M. at the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta, which will be preceded at 5:00 A.M. by a fluvial procession at Manila Bay.
They expect that many of us will be gathered for the concelebrated Mass; they think it will be an opportune time to make a consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We urgently need to seek Our Mother’s intercession to protect the Philippines against natural calamities, the ongoing attacks on the sanctity of life and of the family, and other serious difficulties that our nation faces.
While we agreed in the past to do the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary every year on her feast and also on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, in our respective dioceses, the organizers of this event say that this Act of Consecration is personal in nature and is not consecrating the entire country to Our Lady. This is likewise the case when we recited together the Fatima Centennial Consecration Prayer in July 2017 during the CBCP mid-year conference.
Please consider this invitation to be there at the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta on 04 May 2018 at 6:30 A.M. for the Solemn Thanksgiving Mass and the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary before the more than 400 years old image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
From the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, 24 April 2018
+ ROMULO G. VALLES, D.D.
Archbishop of Davao
President, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines
P.N. 005/2018
