Prayer formulated by H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti on 29th June 2006

This is the prayer that H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti, Bishop ordained by God, formulated spontaneously before the Eucharist that bled on the occasion of the closing of the Social Year 2005-2006.

Oh God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God One and Triune, truly present in the Eucharist, we recognize, express and sing our faith. We are sure that, at this moment, we are in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity and for this reason hymns and songs of joy and gratitude flow from our hearts.

Oh Lord, You know the intentions I had in my heart during the Eucharistic blessing, repeated three times. The first blessing was addressed to the whole world. Yes, oh Lord, the whole world, regardless of religion, race or culture, needs You, You Word and You Eucharist. We know the past and present history. Unfortunately we note that there are still many wars going on today. If men had accepted Your word and Your presence and if they had accepted Your commandment, that of love, today there would not be many widows, many orphans and many seriously ill and mutilated people for life. This immense suffering has fallen upon humanity because some men have sought their interests in a selfish way, suppressing innocents and stamping on the tears of the weak, thus believing that they will be able to occupy privileged positions in history.

Oh Lord, in my heart I have longed to extend the second blessing to Your Church. And I want to emphasize the possessive adjective "Your", because the Church is only Yours and not of men. Sometimes some claim rights and powers for which they decide, in an arbitrary way, who is part of it or who is outside it. We have seen, and the recent mission has shown it to us, that some priests are outside the Church, because they did not recognize Your presence and Your blood that leaked from the host consecrated by me on 11 June 2000, attributing to the devil this great miracle worked by You. And it is precisely them who accuse us of being outside your Church!

Lord, bless your Church, you have established and founded it in a clean and honest way and you have given it everything to be a faithful transmitter of your word and your teachings in history. The men of the Church should have administered the sacraments with humility and gratitude, but they often kept in their hearts the poisonous root of pride and presumption. Men, who over the centuries have continued to perpetuate Your Eucharistic presence, have often behaved like Cain against Abel; these men, Lord, have encrusted Your Church with negative realities... I was going to use a strong term, for this I paused for a moment. Yes, these men have encrusted your Church with diabolical realities and they pride themselves as the guardians of orthodoxy.

Lord, your Church came out of your side, fruit of your sacrifice, passion, death and resurrection. I beg You, may come to fruition, as soon as possible, what the Mother of the Eucharist, while reciting the Magnificat with us, wanted to underline three times: "He put down the powerful from their thrones". We are waiting for all this, not to make sterile claims, but because we believe, in spite of everything, in Your word and all that You promised when you announced that your enemies would fall like pins.

Then, Lord, I take the liberty of making the same plea to you as your apostles: "Lord, wake up because otherwise we will perish!” The apostles, under the pressure of wind and storm, we under the constant blows inflicted by Your enemies who occupy positions of power and authority in the Church today.

Lord, purify Your Church from the tares, this is Your will, it is Your will, but not at the end of time. These weeds can also destroy the good growing grain, which we already see sprouting in the soil made fertile by Your blood and Your suffering.

Oh Lord, in my heart I wished to reserve the third blessing for our dear and poorly governed diocese of Rome. You know how much we love it, how much we have suffered and cried for it! And we are even accused of being elements of division and confusion! The same story repeats itself: those who work to destroy accuse others, in turn, of being operators of destruction! But we know that we are workers of good and peace, otherwise we would not have lived these thirty-five years in immolation, suffering and prayer.

Roma caput mundi, Rome, seat of Peter and of the authentic faithful successor of Peter. Well, Lord, let this Church of Rome be reborn, because with it, all other Churches will be reborn. And then, oh Lord, extend your blessing also to the dioceses from where all brothers present here today coming from outside Rome and from outside Italy belong. Bless their dioceses and may they be elements of witness, so that other people join them in honoring your name, in adoring the Eucharist and in venerating the Mother of the Eucharist.

And now, Lord, accept the fruits of ours work. Abel offered you the most beautiful lambs in his flock, we at this moment offer you these books and these sheets where the story of this mission unfolds in a synthetic way. We would never have dared, Lord, to bear witness to your priests, if this order had not come from you.

In this moment I speak on behalf of all of you who have accomplished this mission. At the beginning of this mission we felt unprepared in various fields: in canon law, morality, dogmatics and biblical exegesis. You, however, have put the right wisdom and understanding in our heart, in our mind and on our lips and we are aware that we have spoken clearly and rightly. And, through our words, you began to slowly transform the hearts of many priests. Yes, it is true, several have offended you again, attributing to the devil what is your work, profaning the Eucharist, thus falling into excommunication and, for this reason, they are outside the Church. But alongside these, there is a greater and more significant number of priests who have accepted your word and, in the silence often spent before you, in the church or in their own room, they ponder on what we told them.

Lord, You only who started this work can carry it out in the best way. If it is permissible for me to make a wish, on behalf of everyone, I ask you to do so, Oh Lord, as soon as possible, because fatigue is overcoming us, and because after so many years, we finally want to live a more orderly life, a more serene and calmer life. A life that is expressed in work and commitment but without having to run to defend ourselves from the blows that unfortunately continue to be inflicted.

Lord, we present to you our hearts through the hands of the Mother of the Eucharist. You know all of them, You know what they contain. And we also ask you, since you have expressed a new desire of yours, a new order and will of yours, to help us carry out the second phase of this mission. We thought we had finished with it. You told us to go on but leaving us free to do it. Well, we will go on to phase B, hoping that this would not be followed by phase C or D. You understand, Lord, what I want to tell you.

Well, my God, bless and strengthen this community which, despite its limitations, flaws and illnesses, has tried to love you and to bear witness to you. We know that we are not strong, powerful and rich and that we do not enjoy authoritative protections but only yours, which is the essential one. Those who look at us would say that we are deluded, but we are people of faith and we do not trust in our strengths and qualities, but in Your power and omnipotence.

Lord, as head of this community, I ask you: bless each of these members, bless the families they come from and convert the families of our members who do not yet know You and do not love You. Bring them towards the good, so that truly every family that has a member in this community may be an exemplary Christian family in which the domestic virtues of the family of Nazareth flourish and are present.

Lord, praise to You, glory now and forever, for all eternity. Amen.

+ Claudio Gatti

Bishop ordained by God

Bishop of the Eucharist