The heart of St. John Vianney – first in New York
More than 10,000 people came to see the heart of St. John Vianney during the five days it spent at a Long Island church, including the closing Mass yesterday, officials said.
Catholics throughout the metropolitan area flocked to the Curé of Ars Church in Merrick to venerate the heart, said Fred Cicetti, a spokesman for The Catholic Heart, a group of parishioners who planned for the relic’s arrival.
After a 1:30 p.m. Mass at Curé of Ars yesterday, the heart was taken to Massachusetts. It will be on display in Waltham and Boston tomorrow and Saturday, respectively.
The Rev. Charles Mangano, pastor at Curé of Ars, said he asked last year to have the heart sent to Long Island for the church’s 80th anniversary. It had not left France since Vianney’s canonization ceremony in Rome in 1925.
Mangano said he hoped the heart of Vianney – the patron saint of parish priests – would serve as inspiration for priests here in the U.S., who have been beleaguered by diminishing ranks and sexual abuse scandals.
"I stand in awe of God’s timing, that he’s orchestrated this to happen at a time when the church really needs to be revitalized," Mangano said.
Now in Boston, untill tomorrow.
“We can’t gauge how many people will be coming to Boston but we believe the relic is going to draw a lot of attention,” said Kevin Shea, a spokesman for the archdiocese.
“Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney,” known popularly as the “Cure (curate) of Ars,” was born in 1786 in a village near Lyons, France.
John Vianney was ordained in 1815 and was assigned three years later to a church in Ars, a remote hamlet, where he quickly became known for providing guidance to troubled souls.
Rev. Vianney, an austere man who some biographers believe was pestered on occasion by the devil, spent up to 18 hours a day in the confessional.
Pope John XXIII proclaimed Rev. Vianney, who died at Ars in 1859, to be a model for parish priests.
In 1904, church officials exhumed his body as part of his beatification, a step in the process of making one a saint.
To their surprise, they found that the body had not decayed.
The saint’s heart was later removed and was placed in a glass reliquary at the church in Ars.
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