US Redemptorists to conduct nationwide blessing for Arthritis sufferers

St Alphonsus Liguori

On Sunday, 1 August, the Redemptorist order across America, will be offering the first-ever, national 'Blessing for Arthritics' after each and every Mass at their parishes and retreat centres across the country.

The blessings will be held on this particular Sunday because 1 August is the feast day of their founder, St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), a doctor of the Church and also the patron saint of those who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. St Alphonsus himself suffered from severe arthritis for the last forty years of his life. The disease left him permanently bent forward and confined to a wheelchair.

"This is the first blessing of its kind, as far as we know, on amnational scale, for people who suffer the chronic and debilitating agonies of arthritis, fibromyalgia and other serious physical conditions," said the Very Reverend Thomas D Picton, CSsR, provincial superior of the Denver Province. "We hope this is thenbeginning of an annual tradition that brings people to our churches to ask for the blessing and intercession of our great saint on his feast day and to beseech Our Father in Heaven to grant these suffering souls deliverance from their pains."

The blessings are open to the public. Prayer cards to St Alphonsus Liguori will also be distributed as part of the blessing ceremony.

For a complete list of participating parishes and retreat centres, please go to www.redemptoristsdenver.org and click on the "Blessing" banner. For those who cannot attend but would like to receive a virtual blessing online, delivered by Father Robert Halter, and a prayer card to St Alphonsus, please go to the same website.

The Redemptorists are a religious congregation of Catholic priests and brothers founded by St Alphonsus Liguori in 1732 in Naples, Italy. Presently, there are some 5,000 Redemptorists working for the poor and most abandoned in nearly every part of the world.

Source: Redemptorists