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Mother Veronica of the Holy Faith (left) shows some of the hosts that will be consecrated during the International Eucharistic Congress; portrait of St. Mariana of Jesus (right). / Credit: Eduardo Berdejo/EWTN News
Quito, Ecuador, Sep 11, 2024 / 12:05 pm (CNA).
Some 65,000 hosts, which are being consecrated in the Masses celebrated during the 2024 International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, could not have come from a better place: the home of Ecuador’s first saint, St. Mariana of Jesus. The home was converted into a Carmelite monastery a few years after the young woman’s death.
The Old Carmelite Monastery of San José, known as El Carmen Alto (“The Upper Carmel,” for its location), is located in the historic district of Quito, where the Ecuadorian saint lived from 1618 to 1645. The saint was a great devotee of St. Teresa of Jesus, the Carmelite mystic and reformer.
According to the historical account, the young Mariana de Jesús Paredes had expressed the desire for her home to become a Carmelite monastery. At present, the home is the residence of 21 nuns who in recent weeks have dedicated themselves to the task of completing 133 packages of 500 small hosts each and 130 packages of 25 medium-sized hosts each, in addition to the special large size.
“Making the hosts is bringing Jesus into our lives, bringing Jesus into the hearts of people,” Mother Verónica of the Holy Face, prioress of the Upper Carmel, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.
The dough, made of wheat flour and water from which the hosts are made, first passes through a machine that forms sheets and the irregular edges are then removed by hand.
Afterward, the sheets are taken to a room to be moistened and then to another to dry in order to avoid lumps forming.
Then the sheets are fed into a cutting machine from which the small hosts are produced. From another come out the medium-sized hosts, which are used by the priests in the consecration. The cutting stage can take about three hours.
Finally, the hosts are placed on a table for the nuns to examine carefully and select only the perfect ones. The misshapen or broken ones are set aside for sale to the public.
In a normal batch, the Upper Carmel produces 70 packages of 400 hosts each, a total of 28,000, whose sales serve to support the nuns.
However, Mother Veronica clarified that “it’s not that we spend the whole day here.”
“In the morning, we do all the cooking, and now with the [International Eucharistic] Congress, the sisters are working a little more, so we are doing an extra hour of cooking, so that in the afternoon we can dedicate ourselves to studies, because each one has her own formation,” she explained.
In her conversation with ACI Prensa, the prioress said that, at least in Ecuador, all the monasteries make hosts for their daily sustenance “and at the same time so that people can receive Jesus, because he is their food.”
“If he were not our food, what would become of us?” she asked.
The Carmelite nun commented that “unfortunately we do not realize the great value of the Eucharist” and the gift that it means to receive the Lord himself.
“Why are we experiencing so much confusion now? Because the soul has distanced itself from God,” she said, noting that “man, now more than ever, needs this spiritual nourishment.”
The prioress recalled that many saints were nourished only by the Body of Christ, as was the case of St. Mariana de Jesus, “our first Ecuadorian saint.”
“She, precisely in the last few months, was not eating anything at all, according to the historical account.” She was “a Eucharistic soul who attended the Jesuits’ holy Mass every day to receive the body and blood of Christ,” the nun related.
The Carmelite said that Jesus “remained, above all, to accompany us in the Blessed Sacrament,” so that we go “to him where he is as a friend, a brother who is at our side and who tells us, as Martha would say to Mary: The Master is there, he is calling you.”
“He is calling us all day long for us to come. But what is happening? The churches, now more than ever, are empty, forgotten, the tabernacles abandoned. Before there were so many people looking for him.”
Instead, “what are we looking for now? Digital media,” she observed.
Mother Veronica explained that the nuns, “as women of contemplative life, more for our Carmelite spirit, what we want is this: to make him known, that they be able to receive him so that they feel that strength, and thus they can also gain much more.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Pope Francis speaks at the Dili Convention Center in East Timor, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Sep 11, 2024 / 11:15 am (CNA).
Before departing East Timor on Wednesday, Pope Francis told a group of young adults he will never forget the smiles he witnessed during his visit to Asia’s youngest and most Catholic country.
“There are two things that touched my heart as I passed through the streets. … The youth of this country and the smile. You are a population who knows how to smile! Keep it up! Do not forget that,” the pope said at the Dili Convention Center on the morning of Sept. 11.
Francis’ event with young adults was his last stop in East Timor, a small island country, before flying four hours to Singapore for the fourth and final leg of his Sept. 2–13 trip in Southeast Asia and Oceania.
After visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor, Pope Francis will conclude the longest international trip of his pontificate with one day in the city-state of Singapore before returning to Rome on Sept. 13.
In East Timor, the pontiff visited a home for disabled children, spoke to Catholic clergy and religious, met local authorities, and celebrated Mass for 600,000 Catholics.
At 98% Catholic, East Timor is the most Catholic country in the world. The nation is young both in years of independent statehood and in population: Two decades after obtaining independence in 2002, the average birth rate was four children per woman.
Pope Francis’ meeting with Timorese youth included members of the Timor Leste National Catholic Youth Commission.
The commission’s executive president, Don Francisco Indra do Nascimento, described it as having a single mission: “To help the young become good Catholics and good citizens.”
He thanked the pope for always having the young at heart and said his presence among them that morning “represents a gift of faith, hope, and love, and encourages us to fight for life so that it may become a paradise, full of respect, charity, fraternity, friendship, and mutual love, of tangible actions for the homeland and for the beloved Church in particular.”
Four young adults — three Christians and one Muslim — briefly addressed Pope Francis, expressing their concerns for the problems of violence, littering, and lack of care for the environment, social media use among young people, and faith formation in the family.
After listening to their testimonies and the performance of a traditional song and dance, the pope engaged those present in a back-and-forth, asking: “What do young people do?”
“Proclaim Christ,” one girl answered. Another person said “Proclaim the word of God,” and another said “Love one another.” A third young man said: “We must cultivate peace in our country.”
“Very good, very good,” Francis responded, adding that there is “one thing” that is common to youth from around the world: “Young people make noise, young people make confusion.”
“The young should make confusion to show the life they have,” he added.
Pope Francis also encouraged the young adults to never lose their faith or fall for the lies of those who say happiness can be found in worldly things such as drugs and alcohol.
“In this smiling country, you have a wonderful history of heroism, of faith, of martyrdom, and, above all, of forgiveness and reconciliation,” he noted. “I ask you a question: Who is the person, in the whole story, who was able to forgive and willing to reconcile?”
“Jesus!” the crowd of young adults responded.
“Jesus! Jesus our brother who loves us all, right?” the pope affirmed as he urged those present to have commitment and to cultivate freedom and fraternity in their country.
“I will never forget your smiles! Never stop smiling!” the pontiff said. “You young people are the majority of the population of this land, and your presence fills this land with life, fills it with hope, and fills it with future. Do not lose your enthusiasm for the faith.”
During the Sept. 9, 2024, session of the International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, Bishop Hryhoriy Komar of Sambir, Ukraine, gave his testimony about the horrors of the war in his country. / Credit: Eduardo Berdejo/EWTN News
Quito, Ecuador, Sep 11, 2024 / 09:50 am (CNA).
The secret of the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people in the midst of the ongoing war with Russia comes “from union with God” and from the Eucharist, affirmed the auxiliary bishop of Sambir in Ukraine, Hryhoriy Komar, during a Sept. 9 address to the International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador.
“We have parishes where they have not stopped praying in the church for almost three years. People have their turn to pray day and night. Our strength is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is an invitation to communicate and forge communion with others. That is, to be with the people in the most difficult moments and to give one’s life for the people,” the prelate said in his remarks about the war that began on Feb. 24, 2022, with the Russian invasion.
At the Congress, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic prelate said “the Eucharist is an invitation to participate in the suffering and resurrection of Christ… It is an encounter with the risen Christ, conqueror of death, with the One who gives life. Only he can heal shattered families, broken lives, and change death into life.”
At the beginning of his talk, Komar thanked the organizers of the Quito 2024 International Eucharistic Congress for the opportunity to “bear witness to the pain and tragedy.”
“The life of our people is divided into two parts: before and after that date [Feb. 24, 2022]. And now we know very well that our life will never be the same as before.”
According to data from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 10 million Ukrainians have fled their homes since the invasion began. Of the total, more than 6.4 million are refugees abroad.
Komar spoke of the magnitude of the suffering his people are experiencing. “It is difficult to find words to describe all the horrors of the war in Ukraine. For many people in the world, war is something abstract, but for us it is a terrible reality that we live every day, experiencing the danger of losing our own lives or the lives of our relatives,” he said.
The prelate also underlined the mission of the Church to proclaim the truth and rejected any kind of malicious or manipulated narrative regarding the origin of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
“Some tell us that Ukraine provoked Russia to start this war. That is like saying something similar to a woman who has been raped. It’s unfair to describe the genocide that Russia is carrying out in Ukraine with the word crisis. It’s a lie. It’s false witness,” he emphasized.
Faced with this reality, the Church has had to reinvent itself to offer spiritual and material support in the midst of chaos. “Our churches are not only a place of prayer but also a place where one can find advice or take shelter during bombings,” Komar said.
He also recognized the heroic work of priests in his country: “I admire the fervor and sacrifice of our priests. They are heroes because with their prayers and daily deeds they support their people.”
Despite the immense suffering, the Ukrainian bishop said he maintains a firm hope in the prayer of Catholics around the world. “To overcome evil, we need a prayer for the conversion of all of us. In Ukraine, in Europe, in Ecuador, in the world,” he said.
He also called on the international community not to forget the pain of his people: “The war in Ukraine is not only Ukraine’s problem.”
Komar concluded his talk by asking the world to pray for Ukraine and to continue searching for the truth.
“May the world be stronger” thanks to solidarity with his country, he said, imploring: “Lord, king of peace and the universe, protect our people and Ukraine.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.