Marian Priest Movement

On May 8, 1972, an Italian priest from Milan, Stefano Gobbi, participated in a pilgrimage to Fatima. As the priest himself reported, after the prayer, he heard an inner voice prompting him to organize a new Catholic movement that would help unite priests around the veneration of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary .

After consultations with the confessor , in October of that year, Gobbi and two other priests announced the creation of a movement in Como , Italy . The initiative received a response, the next year the movement consisted of more than 80 priests, 25 of whom participated in the first congress of the movement in September 1973 in San Vittorino near Rome .

From the beginning of the founding of Fr. Gobby recorded the thoughts and appeals that he attributed to the Virgin Mary. Gobbi himself never spoke of the visible manifestations of the Virgin, but said that these messages arose in his soul after prayers to the Blessed Virgin. In 1997, the notes were published in the form of a book entitled “To Priests, Beloved Sons of the Virgin Mary”. Records cover 24 years of life about. Gobbi.

The reaction of the Holy See to the movement, and especially to the messages recorded by the priest, was cautious and remains the subject of various interpretations. In October 1994, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan wrote a letter to Gobbi stating that a number of members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith believed that the messages he ascribes to the Virgin Mary are his own thoughts. In a letter to Gobby, they asked no longer to attribute the thoughts and appeals in their notes to “the voice of the Virgin Mary”. In response, Gobbi said that he was convinced that the “messages” were genuine proclamations of the Virgin and asked the Holy See for further clarification. It was especially noted that the letter sent to Gobby expressed the private opinion of certain high-ranking clergy and was not framed as an official decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

No official ordinances of the Holy See expressly endorsing or disapproving of Gobbi’s notes, subsequently published as a book, have failed. At the same time, a number of cardinals and high-ranking archbishops took part in the Mariana Movement, and this did not cause objections from the Vatican. The three cardinals, John Baptiste U , Bernardino Echeverria Ruiz and Ignatius Moussa I put their imprints on the book of Gobbi. Pope John Paul II met with Father Gobbi and sent a blessing to the American branch of the movement, but did not provide his imprints on his book.

The goals of the movement were identified by Stefano Gobbi during its creation - to unite priests with the help of the laity around the cult of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to strengthen unity and the Catholic faith. The three main principles of motion are formulated by Fr. The hobby is to devote himself to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin, to observe unity and devotion to the Pope, to call on the faithful to venerate the Virgin Mary.

The movement does not offer any prayer practices of its own, but encourages priests and faithful to use more traditional practices for the Catholic Church in their lives, such as prayer for the Rosary or worship of the Holy Gifts .

The prayer meeting of the members of the movement is called “senaculum” ( eng. Cenacle , lat. Cenaculum ) by the name of the chamber, where the apostles gathered after the Ascension of Christ ( Acts 1:13 ). According to Christian tradition, the Last Supper was held in the same room. The Senaculum in Mexico City was held at a city stadium on November 27, 1994 and gathered 20,000 people.

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