On the 42nd anniversary of the Virgen del Rosario de San Nicolás, a crowd congregated in the sanctuary dedicated to this invocation in Argentina, to celebrate the mother with a procession and a mass chaired by the bishop of San Nicolás, Mons. Hugo Santiago.
As every year, a multitude of pilgrims arrived on September 25 to the city of San Nicolás to participate in the celebrations in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, one of the most important samples of faith in Argentina.
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42 years after his first appearance, the motto of his party, in line with the Jubilee Year, was “Maria, you are our hope”, and the celebrations began at 00:00 hours with the welcome mass to the Virgin, chaired by Mons. Santiago.
The bishop also presided over the Central Masswhich was held at 4:00 p.m. In his homily, taking a reflection of Pope Leo XIV, the Bishop recalled that Jesus “does not die in silence, does not go out as a light that is consumed, but leaves life with a cry”, which in addition to enclosing “pain, abandonment, faith, offering”, it is “a scream of hope.”
“Crying and cry are a sign of hope, because we do it to whom it can help us,” the prelate observed, and in the case of Jesus, he pointed out that God “with the response of the resurrection, will surprise us all with the unpredictable, with the unimaginable.”
Hence the clearest message is “to wait against all hope, because God can always intervene.”
“Who shouts with hope, who cries with hope, thinks that there is still something that can be done or God can do something,” he said, even in current situations such as hundreds of families of society who are suffering from mass dismissals, before the terminal disease of a young man, before a link that broke, or in front of so many brothers who are under the slavery of drugs.
“In all these cases we succumb to impotence,” said Mons. Santiago, urging to “implement the attitude of Christ on the cross: we have to shout crying, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Not as a cry of helplessness, but as a cry of hope.”
In that sense, he also called to “cry before the Virgin, asking for the wisdom that always seeks and finds paths of humility, dialogue, reconciliation. The Virgin, as in Cana, will intercede before Jesus and God can surprise you with the party of the reunion, of reconciliation.”
He also called to listen to the screams of humanity, overcoming apathy and indifference, “the silent screams of so many children who were killed in their mothers by a foolish law of those who had no awareness that, if the law he issued had been in force when he was in his mother’s bosom, today he would probably not exist.”
“We have to listen to the shouts as who complains to those who can help it because in this culture of pragmatic and insensitive death, where what does not produce is discarded, it is tried to legalize euthanasia with the excuse of avoiding suffering,” he added.
“Life is a gift from God and we who are simple creatures do not have the authority to end it by our own means,” recalled the prelate, finally calling to resort to the painful Virgin, who, “as Jesus, also cried as a gesture of hope, as a complaint before the Father, trusting and believing in the unheard of, in the unpredictable. And the unpredictable came.”
“Today with the name of María del Rosario de San Nicolás, the Virgin invites us to shout at the painful challenges of our pilgrimage with a peaceful cry and hope that trust in God the Father capable of the unheard of,” he said.
“Long live María del Rosario, where we can expect!” He concluded, asking for a strong applause for the Virgin.
The pilgrims continued to arrive throughout the day, and participated in the traditional procession through the streets of the city with the image of the Virgin, ending when they arrived at the esplanade of the sanctuary with the farewell in which the faithful threw a rain of petals
The local authorities delivered a floral offering to the image of the Virgin, emblem of the faith of San Nicolás, and the celebration culminated with the Argentine National Anthem.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.