Icon and Relic Programs.
Contact: Carlos Gaudinez, Jr.” <cgaudinez77@yahoo.com
Regarding hosting the icons or relics.
Join thousands of Catholics across North America in asking for Our Lady of Guadalupe’s intercession through the Silver Rose program. In 1960, the Columbian Squires, a youth organization of the Knights of Columbus, came up with the idea of running a rose to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Monterrey, Mexico, to honor Our Lady. The rose was chosen to commemorate Saint Juan Diego and the miracle of the roses. Today, eight roses travel along different North American routes that include Canada, the United States and Mexico. Every stop the Silver Rose makes throughout the pilgrimage is a rosary-centered occasion to pray for respect for life, the spiritual renewal of each nation, and the advancement of the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Your participation in the Silver Rose program, especially your prayers and pledge for life, are a crucial part of our mission to defend and support life in every stage and condition.
Pilgrim Icon Program
Spread devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through a Sacred Heart Holy Hour
Through the Pilgrim Icon Program, councils organize a Sacred Heart Holy Hour featuring an icon depicting the most famous image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, painted in 1767 by Pompeo Batoni and now venerated in the Church of the Gesù in Rome. The reproduction bears the blessing of Pope Francis, through the Papal Almoner, and is one of more than 300 icons traveling across the world, from council to council, for veneration and use in prayer services.
The Sacred Heart Holy Hour includes readings from Sacred Scripture and reflections from Pope Francis on the Sacred Heart, as well as the Divine Mercy Chaplet, prayers to the Sacred Heart and time for silent prayer. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament may also be included. Following the holy hour, families are encouraged to enthrone the Sacred Heart in their homes by placing an image of the Sacred Heart in a place of honor and conducting an enthronement ceremony .
Since the first traveling pilgrim icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1979, more than 191,000 council and parish prayer services with some 23 million participants have been held.
Mexican Martyrs Relic
Each of the six saints — Sts. Pedro de Jesus Maldonado, Luis Batis Sainz, Jose Maria Robles Hurtado, Mateo Correa Megallanes, Miguel del la Mora de la Mora and Rodrigo Aguilar Aleman — was a priest and a member of the Knights of Columbus. They were killed during the persecution of the church in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s.
During that time, the church in Mexico was forbidden to own property, Catholic seminaries and schools were closed, and priests and laity were told to publicly denounce their faith or risk death. These men continued their ministry despite the ban on Catholic practices and were slain.
A First Class Relic of Blessed Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus.
A first-class relic is a body part of a saint, such as bone, blood or flesh. This particular relic is a bone fragment that was extracted from Blessed McGivney’s remains entombed in a sarcophagus at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, Conn., the very place where he was a parish priest when he founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882.
With the title of Blessed, Fr. McGivney is now held up for his “heroic level of virtue” which he displayed during his life as a parish priest and as the founder of the Knights of Columbus.
Contact Jeff Rice for more information about hosting the relic.