Scottish Catholic Observer

Scotland’s bishops have announced an extensive programme of events to celebrate the Year of Faith that officially opens at the Vatican next Thursday.

In a pastoral letter, signed by Cardinal Keith O’Brien and Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, to be read out in every parish in Scotland this Sunday, the bishops announce a series of special occasions at ‘local, national and international level’ to be held across the country to help all Scots ‘discover or rediscover the life-changing experience of encountering Jesus Christ.’

The letter is intended to make all Scots aware of the ‘opportunities opened up by this special Year of Faith.’ These are to include a St Andrew’s Conference on the New Evangelisation 50 years after the Second Vatican Council which will be addressed by the prominent Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia; an invitation to the whole of Scotland ‘to celebrate the 1450th anniversary of the arrival of St Columba on the island of Iona’ and ‘a national pilgrimage to the Holy Land from Scotland’ next autumn.

Other events planned include a special ‘Mass with the Bishops of Scotland for all those who have the responsibility of transmitting and passing on the Faith in our families, communities and schools’ and ‘a major national event for young people to coincide with World Youth Day in Brazil, at which we will replicate locally the experience of faith which is taking place with the Holy Father in Latin America.’

These large-scale events will occur alongside programmes of ‘events and opportunities for you to grow in faith during this special time of grace’ in every parish and diocese in Scotland.

The letter also announces that the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland will be embracing social media and the internet to try and ensure young people hear the message of the Year of Faith.

It closes with this quotation from Pope Benedict XVI that the cardinal and archbishop say all Scottish Catholics should embrace. “May this Year of Faith make our relationship with Christ the Lord increasingly firm, since only in Him is there the certitude for looking to the future and the guarantee of an authentic and lasting love.”

Archbishop Tartaglia is representing the Scottish Church in Rome at the opening of the Year of Faith on Thursday and at the opening of the Synod on New Evengelisation on Sunday. That first Mass on Sunday will see two new doctors of the Church proclaimed: St John of Avila and St Hildegard of Bingen.

A doctor of the Church is one whose writings have proved to be of particular value to the life of the Church, especially in the area of theology and doctrine.

—In this week’s print edition of The Scottish Catholic Observer, Patricia Carroll’s Year of Faith column, page 11

— Details of Year of Faith events from Vatican, visit http://sconews.co.uk/news/21293/possible-new-papal-encyclical-for-the-year-of-faith

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