ROME, MARCH 3, 2004 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II hopes to travel to the Shrine of Loreto on Sept. 5 to beatify Alberto Marvelli, an Italian engineer and politician who died at age 28.
The Pope expressed this hope in a recent audience granted to Paola Bignardi, president of Italian Catholic Action, according to a statement published by this movement.
Catholic Action is planning a pilgrimage Sept. 1-5 to Italy’s most important Marian shrine. More than 100,000 members of the association are expected to participate.
The initiative aims «to give a missionary thrust to the association so that it will rediscover its apostolic passion and develop it in its daily associations and in its relation to parishes,» Catholic Action explained.
Alberto Marvelli (1918-1946), of the Diocese of Rimini, was educated by the Salesians and Catholic Action. Of profound spirituality, he carried out a great work of aid to the poor during World War II.
Committed to the reconstruction of postwar Italy, Marvelli was a member of the executive of the Christian Democratic Party. He died after being accidentally hit by a truck.
The recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession — a Bologna doctor was inexplicably cured of a hernia in 1991 — opened the way to Marvelli’s beatification.
According to tradition, the Shrine of Loreto, located near Ancona on the Adriatic coast, preserves the Virgin Mary’s house, transported from Nazareth in 1294.
