The international pilgrimage of October 12 and 13, 108 years after the events at Cova da Iria, begins today at 5:30 PM with the eucharistic procession at the prayer site.
At 9:30 PM, Archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna will start the evening celebration with the solemn blessing of the candles and the recitation of the rosary at the Chapel of the Apparitions, followed by the candle procession.
An hour later, the celebration of the Word will take place at the site.
On Monday, the most anticipated moment is the mass, starting at 10:00 AM, with the blessing of the sick and the farewell procession.
According to the sanctuary, this is the first time the Archbishop of Beira is leading a pilgrimage at the country’s largest Marian temple.
Claudio Dalla Zuanna was born in 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Italian migrant family.
He joined the congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Dehonians) in 1978 and pursued his studies there. He was ordained as a priest in June 1984 and went to Mozambique as a missionary the following year.
In the African country, he held various roles in ecclesiastical structures, including provincial counselor, parish priest, and trainer.
In June 2012, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as Archbishop of Beira, succeeding Jaime Pedro Gonçalves (1936-2016), the prelate who mediated the Mozambican Catholic Church and the Vatican in the General Peace Agreement signed in 1992 in Rome, which ended 16 years of civil war between the Frelimo Government (Mozambique Liberation Front) and Renamo (Mozambican National Resistance).
The Sanctuary of Fátima also noted that “justice, peace, climate challenges, and the role of the Church in crisis situations are some of the topics on which Archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna has been intervening, motivated by the circumstances and events experienced in Mozambique.”
