In 1982...
St. John Paul II made an unscheduled 32-hour pastoral trip to Argentina...
during the Falklands War, following a visit to Britain.
“Today I come to pray with you during these important and difficult events, which have been taking place for some weeks now. I come to pray for all those who have lost their lives, for the victims on both sides, for families who are suffering, as I have also done in Great Britain,”
St. John Paul II said in Buenos Aires June 11, 1982.
“I come to pray for peace, for a worthy and just solution to the armed conflict.”
On this trip, John Paul II prayed before the original statue of Our Lady of Lujan...
in the Basilica of Our Lady of Lujan during the conflict.
Both of the images exchanged in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 30th...
are both copies of this original image, that dates to 1630.
Pope Francis used to make frequent pilgrimages to Our Lady of Lujan when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and would hear confessions in the basilica, according to Vatican News.
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Also present at St Peter's square in Rome were Argentine war veteran Jose Palacios, military chaplain Father Vicente Martins Torrens, and a group of relatives of those who died in the war, together with a group of lay people belonging to the Faith of the Centurion, an initiative for Argentina's war veterans that had originally set out to have the image returned go Argentina
The image of the Virgin will return to Argentina on November 3rd, where it will be received with full honors by Armed Forces, together with war veterans and family members of the soldiers who died during the war.
After arriving in Ezeiza airport, the Virgin will be taken in procession to the Basilia of Lujan. Once the image is in Lujan, Bishop Oscar Ojea, president of the local bishops conference, will hold a mass in celebration of the event.
Olivera said that, at the initiative of the war veterans, the image of the Lady of Lujan bought from the Falklands/Malvinas will become “a pilgrim image for our country” and will be toured across the whole of Argentina.
“We know that in a war everyone losses”, Olivera said, “but with this gesture we're gaining a supernatural outlook, and the presence of the Virgin of Luján invites us to once again do what her son told us to do.”
According to the bishop, Wednesday's gesture arises from the fraternal bond between two peoples, the English and the Argentine, “who are children of the same mother”
“It comes at a very particular moment for Argentina, in which we have to be reminded of the fact that we are brothers, that we can have different ideas, travel different paths, or chose different proposals, but we are always brothers, and Mary invites us to this reality. We are a family and God is our homeland”.
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According to Argentine media reports, delegates from the “Faith of the Centurion” movement suggested to the Pope that he would travel to Argentina and then the Falklands, in 2021, to preside over an ecumenical meeting between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.
Apparently the same idea was shared with Bishop Mason, who next February is planning to visit Argentina and the Basilica of Luján, together with Father Alfred Hayes, who at the end of the conflict took the image to England.
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