Jubilee 2021

“No display of bizarre piety, simple humanity. Too simple for hagiographers and chroniclers of long-lasting knowledge”: so writes Simon Tugwell in his Homage to a Saint (in the Italian edition of G. Bedouelle, Dominic. The Grace of the Word), a prayer he addresses to St Dominic. “Simple humanity”: Dominic lived in a period of changing times and new challenges for…

It is eight hundred years since St. Dominic died! This is an occasion for the Church to “give thanks for the spiritual fruitfulness of that charism and mission, seen in the rich variety of the Dominican family” (PG 1). As Georges Bernanos wrote in the last century, Dominic’s face is now merged with that of his Order: “If it were in…

St. Francis and St. Dominic were reputed to be friends and so it is beautiful that the first Pope named after St.Francis has sent this in this Letter a gift of warm fraternity to the brothers and sisters of St.Dominic, on the 800th anniversary of his death. The Holy Father begins by saluting Dominic as the “Preacher of Grace”. The…

The 8th centenary of St. Dominic’s Easter has multiplied our joy with the message that Pope Francis has addressed to the Master of the Order. I would like to express my gratitude using the words of O Lumen, the antiphon that the Dominican Family sings in celebration of the Saint from Caleruega. Light of the Church: Dominic wanted to live…

Faced with the profound transformations that mark the contemporary world, the Pope once again underlines the need for a renewal of evangelization. In this year of thanksgiving, he encourages us and all the baptized to inscribe ourselves in what was Dominic’s missionary impulse, animated by a hope for the world and for mankind. A hope for the world, whose name…

On 6th January this year, the Jubilee of the Eighth Centenary of the death – dies natalis – of St. Dominic of Caleruega (c. 1274-1221), which happened on 6th August 1221 in a humid, sweltering Bologna, was inaugurated throughout the Order of Preachers. With the Apostolic Letter Praedicator gratiae, addressed to the whole Dominican Family all over the world, Pope…

The Dominican historian Brother Simon Tugwell, in the first of his series of articles on Dominic of Caleruega, published in 1995 in the journal Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, entitled one chapter “Dominic and his Popes”. There he discussed the personal relationship Dominic had with the first two Popes of the thirteenth century, Innocent III (1198-1216) and Honorius III (1216-1227): it was…

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one bringing good news (Isaiah 52:7). Saint Dominic must have had beautiful feet because he allowed those feet to make him an apostle to the peripheries proclaiming Veritas, refuting error and bringing His blessings to all. Those feet were surely holy feet–pure like the virginal lily; fiery and restless like…

First of all I would like to thank the Holy Father for this letter to the whole Dominican family. In it he encourages us and urges us to live our Dominican charism more intensely – in my case as a contemplative nun. Our father St. Dominic was, above all, a man of prayer and contemplation. At that time he saw…

The important, profound letter from Pope Francis addressed to the whole Order in this Jubilee year warmly stirs our communities of contemplative life, reminding us of the commitment and involvement that we nuns have had since the beginning of the “Holy Preaching”. Our Region of South America and the Caribbean, thanks to the merciful love of God, has beacons that…