CNEWA planning Rome pilgrimage event

(Vatican Radio) The New York based Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) is organizing an event in Rome in January 2013 to raise awareness among Italian Catholics about the Church’s many different Eastern rites.

The Catholic aid and development agency, which also has a small Vatican office, was founded in 1926 by Pope Pius XI to support Eastern rite Catholic churches and provide humanitarian assistance to those in need – regardless of nationality or creed. CNEWA President Monsignor John Kozar told Tracey McClure that co-hosting the January event in Rome will be Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Pontifical Congregation for Eastern Churches and Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, the Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre who has offered as a venue the Equestrian Order’s Grand Salon here in Rome.

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“That’s a beautiful association we have with the Knights,” observes Msgr Kozar, “they’re pretty much dedicated to the Holy Land; we work in the Holy Land but we work in a much broader area – even going into the former Soviet Union up to the Ukraine and going East – wherever there are Eastern Churches in need, especially India.

“These partnerships to us…are a wonderful opportunity to engage people in my country and some from Canada, and Archbishop Terrence Prendergast from Ottawa and member of our board – he’ll be joining us so it gives it some ‘Episcopal dignity’ in affirmation which I think is very important.”

Monsignor Kozar calls the January event a “pilgrimage…where we’re trying to share with the Italian Catholic family this great treasure of the Eastern Churches and their needs.”

The CNEWA president says in January, he will be bringing to Rome “some very committed benefactors, sponsors, who have been very faithful to the needs of the Eastern Churches around the world by contributing their prayers and their gifts to the Catholic Near East Welfare Association…we’re making this a little mini-pilgrimage.”

To plan the event, Monsignor Kozar met with Vatican officials and collaborators in Rome on the sidelines of his participation in celebrations for last Sunday’s canonization of two American saints, particularly the new Native American saint, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha. Msgr. Kozar was involved with the Bishops’ Committee for Black and Indian Missions and the Bureau of Indian Missions, helping them “in a small capacity” in the lead-up to the canonization.