St. John de La Salle parish
awaits the Pope tomorrow
Translated from the Italian service of
March 3, 2012
Benedict XVI will make a pastoral visit tomorrow to the parish of San Giovanni Battista de La Salle in the Torrino quarter of Rome where he will celebrate Holy Mass on the second Sunday of Lent.
The Church, one of the many Roman churches whose construction began in the Great Jubilee Year 2000, was consecrated in 2009, and serves a parish of about 12,000 residents, who are looking forward to the Pope;s visit with great joy. Federico Piano interviewed the parish pries,t Fr. Giampaolo Perugini:
FR. PERUGINI: The Pope will be welcomed by the parish like a father. Eighty-five percent of our parishioners are young couples with children of school age. They are all waiting to hear what the Pope has to say to us, insofar as the Lord Jesus speaks through Peter.
What else will he find in the parish?
Our Church was dedicated on December 12, 2009, and is therefore still developing, but it has been an exponential development. Since a parish was established her - whether it was just by aggregation, actual membership or sense of identity - we have grown a lot.
We have an oratory
[Italian term for a church-based center for a center for multiple forms of community activity] we call Stella Polare (polar star), based on the nomenclature of the streets in the neighborhood. They are all named after a star or a planet, and so we thought that Stella Polare would be an appropriate name for the parish center.
The oratory is run by volunteers, young parents who give their time on Saturdays and Sundays, to the oratory, also a laboratory. Our parish is dedicated to the universal patron of educators, St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle, who also inspired much of the work of St. John Bosco, and so, there is a strong educational vocation in the parish.
We have classes in music, painting, theater, singing, piano and guitar. We even have an orchestra of young musicians who play in Church on Sundays. In sports, we have teams competing in football, mini-basket, mini-rugby, mini-volley.
It is a young parish, which is still growing, and which is very honored to welcome the Pope.
What are the problems, especially at the social level?
The neighborhood is generally well off. The couples here mostly acquired their homes when the parish was still a project on the boards and so, they are simply paying off their mortgages now. Mostly, both parents work, and so their problems have to do with bringing the children to school and taking them home, and in general, with problems of movement. But the greater problem will be whether these families will succeed in keeping the nuclear family together.
[They presumably have several years more before their children go to college and have to face that question.]
The other problem has to do with secularization. A life that is mostly caught up in work and the quest for wellbeing, runs the risk of marginalizing their spiritual life or considering it as simply the observance of some moral rules.
What results do you expect from the Pope's visit?
We are already seeing it during our preparation for the visit, in which so many persons are involved, individuals coming forward to ask ume what they can do to be useful. Then we have existing parochial groups, who have been holding formational meetings about the Petrine ministry, and on this Pope in particular - his encyclicals and his role in the Church and the world.
I feel the joy of bringing him closer to families who love him and pray for him daily, who are aware of the difficulties and concerns he has to face, and wish to do what they can to keep him smiling and feel comforted by the prayers of the faithful.