In his video message for Covenant of Love Day 2024, Father Alexandre Awi Mello, president of the International Schoenstatt Presidium, talks about love for the Church and announces a new campaign, which will be launched on October 18: We are all Schoenstatt.
Dear Schoenstatt Family,
We are celebrating 110 years of our Covenant of Love. It all began in this place. Our history is linked to this place and 10 years ago many of us were right here to receive this fire, to accompany the Blessed Mother who once again took possession of her Shrine.
You all remember when the young people of the Fackellauf (Torch Race) arrived with the torch and set us all on fire. That fire that we felt in our hearts is the same fire that we want to continue to give to the Church today, 10 years later.
That is why this year’s novena had as its motto “fire for our Church”. We do not want to remain looking at the past. We want to project our charism for the whole Church. May this fire that burnt in our hearts continue to be present, continue to burn in the Church.
And that is also why this year we want to begin a campaign around the Original Shrine to declare that we are all Schoenstatt. Everyone throughout the world is Schoenstatt and that is why we want to embrace the origin, embrace the Original Shrine and promote the Covenant of Love. We want to spread this strong conviction that our charism is important for today’s Church everywhere.
We do it with the awareness that we are an international family. That is why this campaign has three focuses: the Original Shrine, Father Kentenich with the whole process we are carrying out for his canonization and Schoenstatt International, the schoenstatt.com web page, which needs to be sustained in some way by everyone, supported by everyone.
From the Shrine we want to feel united as an international family, because we are all attached to this place and we want to carry Father Kentenich’s fire, the fire of the mission he left us, of his charisma for the Church of today and tomorrow. That is why we embrace the origin, we promote the covenant, because today, as 110 years ago, as 10 years ago, today, we are all Schoenstatt.
