Leeds People For Life are organizing their 10th annual pilgrimage in thanksgiving for the gift of life on Monday, 8th April, next Monday week - and for the intentions of the Pope.For Catholics in Britain, there can be no more important place to pray for life and for the family than at a shrine of which the history began nearly1000 years ago in 1061.
In the Middle Ages Walsingham was known throughout Europe as Little Nazareth - the home of the Holy Family. During that thousand years, there can never have been a greater peril to the sanctity of life, to marriage and to the family than there is today - threatened as they are are by the policies of David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, and all the leaders of the major parties in Parliament.
As Pope John Paul II said: “ ... a great prayer for life is urgently needed ... ”, Evangelium Vitae 100.
For those making the trip from Yorkshire a coach picks up in a coach picks up: Bradford, Foster Sq. Railway Station at 6-30; at Leeds.Playhouse 6.45; at St Theresa’s Crossgates at 7.00; at Wakefield, Kirkgate at 7.30. The local contact is Annemarie tel 019246948661. The price for the trip is £16. For further information telephone: 01132582745 or 07747698553.
At the Walsingham shrine, there will be Mass at 12 midday, the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham - with an afternoon programme including a Holy Hour, Divine Mercy prayers, the Holy mile walk, and Stations of the Cross, plus a visit to the priory grounds or to the Anglican shrine.
I'm sure that travellers from Yorkshire will be delighted to meet with pilgrims from elsewhere on Monday week. (I shall be in Fatima on that day for the final event in the pilgrimage of the Icon of Our Lady of Czestechowa - when the Icon will reach the Atlantic Ocean after a 65,000 kilometre journey from the coast of the Pacific Ocean at Vladivostok. During the pilgrimage around 250 thousand leaflets in 15 languages have been distributed and at every destination there has been an act of entrusting the protection of the civilisation of life and love into the hands of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.)
Given the apparently overwhelming threats facing life, marriage, parents and the family, as a Catholic I believe there's nothing happening in the world on Monday, 8th April, which is more important that the Leeds People for Life pilgrimage to Walsingham.
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