(Vatican Radio) Don’t have the time or the money to go on pilgrimage to one of the
world’s many Catholic holy shrines? The Rome Vicariate’s travel and pilgrimage agency,
Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi (ORP) is offering to take prayer intentions to the sites
for you. Rosamaria Mancini, who manages the agency’s online “Jospers” community (an
acronym for “Journeys of the Spirit”) says the ORP has been shepherding pilgrims to
the Vatican basilicas and Museums and to shrines across Europe and the Holy Land for
more than 75 years.
“Here at ORP we know that not everyone can actually physically
participate in a pilgrimage but that doesn’t mean that their thoughts and their prayers
can’t be brought there.”
On August 2, 2012, ORP director Fr. Caesar Attuire
will be accompanying Mancini and a small group of pilgrims to St. Francis’ town of
Assisi in Italy’s Umbrian hills. Mancini says anyone in Italy can join or send in
their prayer intentions to be taken along on the journey.
The ORP has received
thousands of prayers sent online or by mail from all over the world for the pilgrimage
to Assisi and to previous journeys to the Marian shrine of Lourdes in France and to
Our Lady of Fatima.
To send a prayer on pilgrimage, check out their Facebook
page at "Jospers World" or on Twitter at @JospersWorld.
For more about the
initiative, listen to Tracey McClure’s interview with Rosamaria Mancini: