Pope Leo XIV received as a gift an image of Santa Rosa de Lima, who gave him the community of an Italian parish dedicated to the first Saint of America and Patron of the Philippines.
Although the gift photos were published at the beginning of June, this fact charged notoriety as the Santa Rosa party approached, which is held in Peru this August 30.
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Fr. Pasquale Gargione, pastor of San Antonio and Santa Rosa in Alano, in the Italian province of Salerno in Campania, was the one who shared the photographs.
“With joy and emotion I share with you these images of our Santa Rosa in the hands of the Holy Father León. I thank who has given us this precious opportunity,” said the priest in Facebook.
The presbyter had written a letter to Leo XIV congratulating him for his choice and told him that in his parish he worships “to the Holy of Peru.”
“I and my parish community, for the strong link that unites it to that land in which you have lived, for years, as a missionary and pastor, we have thought of giving you the image of the saint,” the priest wrote in his letter.
In Peru, in the 1980s the Pope was missionary in Chulucanas, in the Sierra del Department Norteño de Piura; Agustinos trainer in Trujillo in the 90’s, also in the Peruvian north; and was a bishop of Chiclayo; Always in the north of the country, a position he held between 2015 and 2023.
Fr. Gargione also commented on his letter that he and his faithful express to Pope León his affection and assure him “always our prayer for his person and his Petrino ministry, by intercession of Santa Rosa de Lima, Patroness of America and Alano.”
Santa Rosa de Lima (1586-1617) is the first Santa de América, patron saint of this continent and the Philippines. It is contemporary with San Martín de Porres and received the confirmation of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo.
Every August 23, the Catholic Church celebrates Santa Rosa, but in Peru this party is celebrated on August 30 and has a range of solemnity, it is a day of precept and civil holiday.
In Lima, crowds pilgrimage to his sanctuary – the former home of the saint, located next to the temple that is named today – to leave her letters in the well where she took water for her house, which is now a sanctuary.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.