ORDER OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE: PILGRIMAGE TO ROME AND REVISION OF STATUTE

Vatican City, 5 September 2013 (VIS) – On 13 September, vigil of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Pope Francis will receive in audience three thousand Dames and Knights of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, on a pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Year of Faith. They will be accompanied by the American Cardinal Edwin O'Brien, Grand Master of the Order, and the pilgrimage will be preceded by an important event, the Consulta, which is convoked every five years.

The Order, of medieval origin and reconstituted by Blessed Pope Pius IX in 1847, seeks to promote the spiritual growth of its members and to support the Catholic Church in the Holy land, in its broadest sense (Cyprus, Israel, the Palestinian Territory and Jordan). It has 30,000 members in 35 nations, organised in the form of Lieutenancies and Delegations. Their commitment to the Church is accompanied by the important financial support they provide, essentially destined for the institutions and works of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. For example, their donations during the last decade totalled almost 100 million dollars, and were used for the construction and restoration of churches, schools and hospitals, or the support of artisanal and family businesses.

In a press conference held in the Holy See Press Office this morning, the programme of events accompanying the pilgrimage was presented by Cardinal Edwin O'Brien, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization and Professors Agostino Borromeo, governor general of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and Ivan Rebernik, chancellor of the Order.

Cardinal O'Brien, after offering a profile of the Order, recalled that the members are “volunteers who, as such, receive no remuneration for their work but rather, on the contrary, are obliged to give an annual contribution to finance their charitable activities”, and emphasised that during recent years the Order has promoted various initiatives such as granting microcredit to small family businesses and offering study bursaries, aimed at fostering better conditions of life for Christians to encourage them not to leave their land of origin”.

Archbishop Fisichella remarked that the pilgrimage to Rome constitutes an effective witness to faith inasmuch as it is the visible sign of direct commitment to practical peace-building, especially in those lands and among the many poor and innocent who, especially at the present moment, are living in a situation of extraordinary tension and fear due to the violence that looms over them and over the entire world. … Faith does not distance itself from the responsibilities that we are all called upon to assume in relation to the world at large in our times, but on the contrary provokes and induces concrete commitment to constructing a better society”.

Professor Borromeo referred to the 2013 Consulta, which opens on 10 September and lasts three days and will be attended by members of the Grand Magisterium, the Lieutenancies and the Delegations of the 35 countries, representatives of the Secretary of States and the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, will focus on the theme of the revision of the Statute. “The current text, in its overall form and in certain specific norms, no longer corresponds to the ecclesiology that has developed following Vatican Council II and to the sensibility of our times. The new draft text aims … to develop more organically the spiritual commitment of the members, to more deeply root the action of the 'peripheral structures' (the Lieutenancies and Delegations) in the life of the local Churches, and to extend the charitable activities of the Order to a broader area of the Middle East than that in which it currently operates”.

“The development of the work will lead to a new draft Statute which the Cardinal Grand Master will submit to the Supreme Pontiff for approval”, he concluded.

Finally, Professor Rebernik confirmed that as well as the liturgical celebrations in various churches in the centre of Rome and in the Papal Basilicas scheduled during those days, a conference will be held by the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, and a concert will take place in the papal Basilica of St. John Lateran. The concluding Holy Mass will be celebrated in the papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls.