Romana

Editions of St. Josemaría Prayer Card in new languages

The almost 1,400 million persons who read Chinese will now be able to find and download the prayer to St. Josemaría in Mandarin more easily. The same is true of those who speak Siamese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Bulgarian, or Armenian. These are the new languages in which the prayer card is offered on www.josemariaescriva.info, in addition to the 42 translations that have been available up to now. Since the day of his death, on June 26, 1975, the headquarters of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Rome began to receive reports of favors throughout the world attributed to the intercession of Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá: conversions, decisions to practice the Catholic faith, cures, material favors… Many people have begun to pray to St. Josemaría thanks to an encounter—not infrequently by chance—with a copy of his prayer card.

A portrait in the Philippines and a statue in Brazil

On February 14, the 80th anniversary of the day on which God made known to St. Josemaría the apostolate of Opus Dei with women, a portrait of St. Josemaría was presented and blessed in the Cathedral of Jaro, Iloilo City, the Philippines. Archbishop Angel Lagdameo of Jaro, together with Auxiliary Bishop Gerry Alminaza, officiated at the ceremony. Next to the painting, the faithful could venerate a relic ex ossibus, with the inscription “St. Josemaría, the saint of ordinary life.”

Similarly, in the Brazilian Archdiocese of Goiana, a statue of St. Josemaría has been installed in the parish of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In Italian cities

During the last few months, various Italian localities have honored St. Josemaría, each in its own way. Noteworthy are the dedication of a park in Verona to St. Josemaría on June 15; the naming of a plaza in the Jardines Naxos, the first Greek colony of Sicily, on May 15; a photographic exhibit in the Casa dei Carraresi, seat of the Treviso museums, from April 23 to 25; a photographic exhibit in the Galleria Civica de Monza, from January 29 to 31; the installation of a statue of St. Josemaría in the Basilica of San Angelo in Formis (Province of Caserta), on December 5, 2009; and the dedication of gardens situated behind the city hall of Loano (Province of Savona), on November 21, 2009.

Photographic Exhibition “The extraordinariness of the ordinary” (Venezuela)

The Communication and Culture Association sponsored a photographic exposition entitled “The Extraordinariness of the Ordinary,” which invited the spectator to dialogue with the message of St. Josemaría through a series of 26 photographs. The exposition is the work of six young artists, who captured the beauty of daily life with their lenses: Argenis Bellizzio, Jean Herrera, Maryori Cabrita, Trevor Cornilliac, Aaron Sosa and Meridith Kohuth. Each photograph turns the momentary into something special, and makes it extraordinary.

“The Extraordinariness of the Ordinary” was inaugurated in the Daniel Suarez Gallery, in the city of Caracas. Later it would travel throughout the rest of the country: San Cristobal, Merida, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Barquisimeto, and Valencia.

This traveling exhibit included the photographs, some texts of St. Josemaría, and reflections of Laureano Marquez (political commentator and humorist) and Alicia Alamo Bartolome (an architect, writer and dramatist.

The coordination was carried out by Kelly Martinez and Jose Luis Omaña. The latter said: “We wanted to produce an exposition where the image is shown as an event, as a flash of light, in which, as if by a chance, the extraordinary and the ordinary merge.”