Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Coventry

Moving to the Midlands the pilgrimage now visit the shrine of Our Lady of Coventry in the cathedral destroyed in the 1540s, and which adjoined the sites of the Anglican cathedrals of St Michael - one a great late medieval parish church elevated to cathedral status in 1918 and tragically wrecked by bombing in 1940, and its modern replacement from 1962. The foundations of part of the cathedral can be seen in an archaeological park close to.the two more recent cathedrals and Holy Trinity Church. Despite the bombing Coventry still has a surprising number of medieval monuments.

The medieval statue was associated with Earl Leofric and his wife Godgifu, who bequeathed to it a chaplet of jewels. This may indicate that the late Anglo-Saxon statue survived as the cathedral was rebuilt around it by the Benedictine monks who served it until 1539.

My post from last year, together with other links, about the shrine can be found at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Coventry

May Our Lady of Coventry pray for Pope Leo XIV

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge

The Pilgrimage now continues to the other ancient seat of academic learning in England with a visit to Cambridge.

The description of the image as Our Lady of Grace links it to others along the route, and I wrote about this title in the post about the image in St Paul’s. As I indicated there evidence suggests that such images may have been of the Virgin and Child rather than the free-standing image more usually associated with the title today.

My article, together with various links, from last year can be seen at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge

May Our Lady of Grace in Cambridge pray for Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV

Together with many other people, I was not expecting the election of a new Pope yesterday on only the fourth ballot in the Conclave. I was checking my iPad to see what was happening just as the white smoke was emerging from the famous chimney above the Sistine Chapel.

I therefore watched the whole scene unfold live, which I had not managed beforehand on similar occasions. 

I must say that there was for me a great sense of relief that he was not one of the much touted frontrunners  Cardinals Parolin, Zuppi, Aveline or Tagle - in his case one had horrific visions of a Papal Karaoke Creed at an open-air Mass on some future Papal tour. Nor, happily, did I feel my heart sink as it did in 2013 as I just caught the announcement of Pope Francis’ election - that feeling never left me. 

Cardinal Prevost was not one of those who featured in much of the pre-Conclave coverage, although if you did follow that he was certainly mentioned as a possible candidate, and were a US candidate to be chosen, as quite probable. 

His choice of the name Leo links him to some of the great figures instrumental in the history of the Papacy. The first was St Leo the Great, the first great theologian of the Papacy as an institution, and who stood up to Attila the Hun as well as being a major influence of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 - “Peter has spoken through Leo” Then there was St Leo III who croned Charlemagne in 800 and Leo IX whose pontificate marked the beginning of the eleventh century Reform Papacy. In more recent times there was the long pontificate of Leo XIII with development of Catholic social teaching and Rerum novarum. 

Several friends and I agreed as to the vesture of the new Pope with the traditional summer mozzetta and the Papal stole - much more traditional and what he should be wearing on such an occasion. That was definitely a good sign.

Conventional wisdom was of course that a US Cardinal would be a very unlikely candidate for the Papcy, but like so much convential wisdom it has been overturned. In the case of the new Pope he was born in Chicago but he may well be more Peruvian and took up Peruvian citizenship. His family ancestry is French,Italian and Spanish, and he has spent time studying in Italy. So he is far from mono-cultural and something indeed of a citizen of the world.

Despite the media latching on to anything that could be construed as a reference to Pope Francis and his initiatives the new Pope’s address from the loggia of St Peter’s was reminiscent of things Pipe Benedict said when he was elected and when he was inaugurated in 2005. As one of the best Catholic online commentators pointed out in a video today any new Pope would express similar broad themes at this point.

As an Augustinian he quoted St Augustine, who was a great influence on Pope Benedict - the shell in his coat of arms and on his vestments at his inauguration were an acknowledgment of that. It is easy to see such links, but exaggerating them may well be unwise

I got tired whilst following the coverage  of BBC commentators and ‘experts’ all referencing Pope Francis, almost as if there had been no other Pope, not another 265 since St Peter.

We must wait and see what the new Pope's themes and ideas develop into, as know relatively little of his opinions on many matters - he has kept cards close to his pectoral cross. 

Some rigidly Traditionalist US commentators were quick to find fault, including that Pope Leo was perceived as being anti-Trump. Someone needs to break it to them and other Americans  that most people, Catholic or not, outside the US, and many within, are definitely not fans, or have very grave doubts about the President. and consider the wisdom of Incorporating him and his Vice-President into the case for Catholic Tradition very doubtful..

As I wrote above, we must wait and see, and pray for Pope Leo XIV.

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Oxford

The Pilgrimage now moves out of London and travels westwards to Oxford. My article, with links to those from previous years can be seen  at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Oxford

May Our Lady of Oxford pray for Pope Leo XIV

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Muswell

The Pilgrimage concludes its north London section with the Shrine of Our Lady of Muswell.  

I suspect this is now the least well known or remembered of these three pilgrimage destinations, yet quite a bit can be recovered about it using the diligent researches of various historians, and which I try to set out in my various articles about this particular healing well.

There are links to all these online sources accessible through my post from last year at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Muswell

Thought for the Day

As the Conclave to elect the new Pope opens in Rome I would commend to the reflection of my readers this quotation - a favourite of mine - from the preface to Walter Ullmann’s A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, which was first published in 1971.

“ the papacy is the only institution within the European or Western orbit of civilisation which links the post-apostolic with the atomic age:”

When I first read it, many years ago, I was struck by not just its truthfulness but by the implications of the truth it expressed. That sense has stayed with me, and maybe it was a factor in clarifying my path to reception some years later.

 

Ullmann continues 

“ as an institution it has witnessed the birth, growth, prosperity, decay and disappearance of powerful empires, nations and even of whole civilisations; it has witnessed radical transformations in the cosmological field evidenced by bloody revolutions, intercontinental wars and popular upheavals of such magnitudes and dimensions that wholly novel political and social structures appeared in their train.”

Manifesto for a new Papacy

A few days ago the website Rotate Cæli published the text of an interesting and striking open letter addressed to the Cardinals. An essentially anonymous piece it does bear the name of Peter Kwasniewski who, I assume, has maybe co-ordinated it.

It could be seen as a Traditionalist programme for a new Pontificate.

How much of it one might expect to see under whoever is elected as the next Supreme Pontiff will very much depend upon who that new Pope actually is. What is important is that theologians and others concerned for the future direction and mission of the Church are sufficiently confident to make their case.

The text can be read at Renewal and Restoration in the Church: An Open Letter to the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church

Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Willesden

The next station on the Pilgrimage is the Shrine - I should really make that plural as there are now, as at Walsingham, both Catholic and Anglican ones - of Our Lady of Willesden. Indeed there were two statues in the original shrine in the thirteenth century.

My post from last year made some additions to the previous ones, and they can all be accessed at Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Willesden

It also, because of one of the articles I linked to, includes what little I could find about the devotion to Our Lady of Crooms Hill or Crome’s Hill close to Greenwich.

The medieval Willesden shrine, and even more that at Crooms Hill, appears to have had a largely, but not exclusively, local following, and Our Lady of Willesden was, apparently, especially popular with ladies from London. That may be that it was far enough out of the city be be a pilgrimage, but not so far as to be too arduous or take up a lot of time and preparation. This may, of course, reflect a lack of evidence. The modern revivals appear also to have their main appeal to the local community rather than drawing upon a wider area.

May Our Lady of Willesden pray for the Papal Conclave and for the election of a wise and holy Pope