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[–]Nemacolin[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Most recently we witnessed an attack on our history as Americans. Images of our Nation’s Fathers have been defaced, including that of Christopher Columbus in Wilkes-Barre.

Perhaps those who cause havoc in our city streets fail to understand the true historical value of these men and women of our past.

Christopher Columbus was a man of God. His own sea vessel was named after the Mother of God, The Santa Maria. A reading of Columbus’s writings, along with the testimony of his contemporaries, reveals evidence that Columbus was a man of deep devotion who took his Catholic faith seriously, says author Benjamin Broussard.

At sunset 90 men stood on the decks of three boats, led in prayer by Christopher Columbus, singing the Salve Regina hymn which rang out across the Atlantic.

Columbus had promised his crew that he would turn back had they not spotted land by the Spanish feast day of the Virgin Mary, ‘Our Lady of the Pillar’. He had faith that Our Lady would not abandon the enterprise he had worked so hard to bring about.

As Columbus later knelt on the beach, he gave thanks to God, offering prayers such as the Credo, and the Te Deum in Latin. He proceeded to claim the new land for his sovereigns, but not before first claiming it for his Divine Master, giving it the name San Salvador (Holy Savior).

One of Columbus’s contemporaries, Bartolome de las Casas, described him as a man of righteousness and deep piety who read the divine office like a churchman, hated blasphemy and profane swearing, and was also devoted to Saint Francis – was a Third Order Franciscan.

We should not compare any wrong thinking of men of the 1400s with what we know today.

Upon his death in 1506, on the Vigil, feast of Christ’s Ascension, surrounded by his fellow Franciscans and his sons, Columbus’s departing words were “O Lord I Commend my spirit.”

American Jesuit Father John Hardon would remark, “It is one thing to say that Columbus discovered America. It is something else to realize that he opened the door to the most phenomenal spread of Christianity since the time of Saint Paul.”

Christopher Calore

Wilkes-Barre