Goa celebrates canonisation of St Joseph Vaz
Reporters Name | CAMIL PARKHE | Friday, 16 January 2015 AT 12:05 AM IST
Panaji: The excitement at the ancestral house and sanctuary of St Joseph Vaz at Sancoale is palpable. Sancoale will celebrate the feast of St Joseph Vaz on Friday, for the first time after the son of the soil became the first Goan to be declared a saint.Hundreds of people have been visiting the oratory of St Joseph Vaz and his sanctuary at Sancoale during the ongoing novena of the new saint.
The feast mass will be celebrated at St Joseph Vaz Sanctuary at 10 am on Friday, January 16. Goa, Daman and Diu Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao who attended the canonisation ceremony in Sri Lanka on Wednesday will be the main celebrant at the feast mass.
The feast day is celebrated on the death anniversary of the saint who had died at Kandy in Sri Lanka on January 16, 1711. St Joseph Vaz’ oratory room, the only remaining portion of his ancestral house in the village, is maintained by the nuns belonging to a local congregation, Holy Family of Nazareth. The nuns said that a large number of devotees have been visiting their convent to pray at the oratory room of the new saint.
Holy Family of Nazareth congregation’s Mother General Alivita along with a team of a nuns had gone to Sri Lanka to witness canonisation of Joseph Vaz.
The nun’s congregation also runs a school in Sancoale which is named after the new saint.
