PANJIM: Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrão explained the decision to shift the celebration of the novena and feast of St Joseph Vaz from the Sanctuary to the site of the old Church of Sancoale, stating that the Sanctuary would not be conducive for adequate liturgical participation in the services by the growing number of the devotees.
The Archbishop on Friday met a few parishioners from Sancoale in Panjim, on the issue. As per the release from the Archdiocese, the Archbishop reminded how Fr Joseph Vaz had reached a larger-than-life proportion after he was canonized and how crowds of devotees flocking to the Sanctuary in Sancoale were growing with every passing year.
The Archbishop explained that the decision to have the religious services of the novena and the feast at the larger site of the old Church of Sancoale has been taken after much thinking and discernment and after consultations with various diocesan bodies, chiefly because it was seen that, in the future, the present site of the Sanctuary, where the services have been traditionally conducted for decades, would not be conducive for an adequate liturgical participation in the services.
“We want this to happen as we would like our saint to be known far and wide,” he said. Besides, he added that the old Church that the saint used to go to pray and where he wrote the well-known Letter of Bondage to the Virgin Mary.
The Archbishop explained that, after becoming a saint, Fr Joseph Vaz had ceased to belong to Sancoale alone or even to Goa and India, but belonged to the whole Catholic world. “Even as a Patron of the Archdiocese of Goa, which he was since the year 2000, Joseph Vaz belonged to the whole of Goa and as such, decisions about where and how to celebrate his feast did not vest with the parishioners of Sancoale but with the diocesan authorities,” he said.
Earlier a group of parishioners of Sancoale had opposed the shifting of the novena and feast of St Joseph Vaz from the Sanctuary to the old Sancoale Church.
