Father João Merlini, C.PP.S.

A life with the flavor of the Gospel

*Article Vatican News

It will be the middle of the European winter, but in any case, it will be a sunny day. The family of Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood is praying and working towards one of the celebrations that will mark the beginning of the next Holy Year, the beatification of Father John Merlini, who was the third general moderator of the religious institute founded by Saint Gaspar del Bufalo in the mid-19th century.

Ceremony at St. John Lateran

The ceremony, scheduled for January 12, 2025, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran – headquarters of the Diocese of Rome – will have Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, at the altar as president of the assembly.

“This event of grace, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year 2025, will see us united in holy pilgrimage from all parts of the world,”

says a note from the religious congregation, signed by Father Emanuele Lupi, current moderator of the missionaries, and Sister Nicla Spezzati, a worshipper of the Blood of Christ and postulator of the cause.

Apostle among the rejected

The note recalls some aspects of the life of Father John Merlini, a native of Spoleto – in the Italian region of Umbria – where he was born on August 28, 1795.

“A man of profound discernment and wisdom, he was an apostle – it reads – of “entire populations in the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples”, an evangelizer of the poor and the rejected, whose “fraternal charity” nourished a life with “the flavor of the Gospel”.

The beatification event, conclude the general moderator and the postulator, “will see us united in holy pilgrimage from all parts of the world.”

“As a Family of Most Precious Blood of Christ, with all the people of God, we invoke the Holy Spirit to walk the via sanguinis, 'the new and living way that Christ inaugurated for us, to maintain, without wavering, the profession of our hope'”.