Saturday is often a day of devotion to Our Lady. As such, tomorrow our Mass will commence at 12noon with the Angelus. It will be celebrated at the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Narberth, the second church of this parish. Find it on our Parish YouTube Page

During the Papal Address “Urbi et Orbi” (to Rome and the World) given at Rome a few moments ago, the music played as the Pope gazed on the icon of Mary was this:

Sub tuum praesidium
confugimus,
Sancta Dei Genetrix.
Nostras deprecationes ne despicias
in necessitatibus nostris,
sed a periculis cunctis
libera nos semper,
Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

We fly to Thy protection,
O Holy Mother of God;
Do not despise our petitions
in our necessities,
but deliver us always
from all dangers,
O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. Amen.

The ‘Sub tuum praesidium’ is from the 3rd Century and is the world’s oldest hymn to Our Lady. It has often been mentioned by Pope Francis, and he said that it should be sung “in moments of spiritual turbulence [when we should] shelter beneath the mantle of the Holy Mother of God pronouncing the invocation ‘Sub Tuum Praesidium’.