Back on home turf

Icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the heartbeat of the mother.

Within the opening months of his pontificate, Blessed John Paul II visited his homeland of Poland, where every child knows that in order to hear the heartbeat of the Mother, he or she must visit the Shrine of the Virgin of Czestochowa.  Twenty-seven years later, his successor, Pope Benedict's first Apostolic Voyage was to his homeland of Germany for the celebration of the XX World Youth Day in Cologne.  While this is probably not a planned occurrence, but rather a coincidence, it could very well be a pattern which as been taking shape under the direction of the Holy Spirit!

If that is true, then the third leg of this story is about to be told: elected Roman Pontiff on March 13 of this year, Pope Francis is about to return to the continent which he called home until this year.  In fact, instead of resting tomorrow (as was originally planned), Pope Francis will visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida, the place where he and his fellow bishops were gathered for the V General Conference of the Bishops of South America and the Caribbean, the fruit of which was the document which as become known as the Aparecida document: the draft of a vision for pastoral activity within the dioceses of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Since Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was then the President of the South American Bishops' Conference, and therefore had an influential hand in the writing of the Aparecida document, some have said that the pastoral plan is now being put into place not only for South America but for the whole world.

The speeches which His Holiness will pronounce during his visit to Brazil this week are expected to draw on the building blocks contained in the Aparecida document, so if you have a chance, flip through it, get acquainted with it, and prepare yourself to see it become a reality.