Sweden gains shrine to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians
Sweden’s Cardinal Anders Arborelius dedicated the country’s first shrine Saturday specifically for prayer for persecuted Christians.
The Archbishop of Stockholm presided at the ceremony July 22 at the Holy Martyrs Syriac Catholic Church in Kista, a district in northern Stockholm.
The dedication of the icon of Mary, Mother of the Persecuted, was marked by a Syriac Catholic Eucharistic liturgy attended by hundreds of people, including members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, which belongs to the Oriental Orthodox communion, and Dominican Sisters originally from Iraq.
In a homily delivered in both Swedish and English, Arborelius said that Western Christians needed the witness of the persecuted as they faced the challenges of growing secularism.
He urged Catholics in Sweden — a country believed to be home to more than 120,000 Middle Eastern Christians — to pray to Mary, Mother of the Persecuted, especially that their young people would resist the lure of secularization.
