The Heralds of the Gospel celebrate this Divine Mercy Sunday a new day of special significance with the priestly ordination of 26 deacons from the Clerical Society Virgo Flos Carmeli, in a ceremony presided over by Cardinal Raymundo Damasceno Assis, emeritus archbishop of Aparecida and current pontifical commissioner.
The celebration, which is being followed live on YouTube, comes just one day after the diaconal ordinations and represents a major step for the internal life of the Heralds, after years in which this process had remained blocked. The image of the ceremony, broadcast live, thus shows one of the most significant moments for this ecclesial reality in recent times.
The ordination of new priests also takes place on a particularly symbolic date for the Church, Divine Mercy Sunday, within the Octave of Easter, which gives the act a marked liturgical and spiritual character. For the Heralds of the Gospel, the day also represents the culmination of a long period of waiting for dozens of vocations that had been awaiting the opportunity to finally access the priesthood.
The announcement of these ordinations had been made days earlier by the institution itself, which reported the ordination of 31 deacons on April 11 and 26 priests on the 12th, thus putting an end, at least in practice, to a paralysis that had been ongoing since 2019. The priestly ceremony this Sunday is presided over by Cardinal Damasceno, a key figure in this stage due to his role as pontifical commissioner.
Beyond the numerical data, the live broadcast of the ceremony has an evident symbolic value. It is not just about the ordination of new priests, but the public staging of a long-awaited normalization in an institution that has lived through years of intervention, uncertainty, and strong internal tension.
The day therefore offers a double reading: on one hand, the joy proper to the Church at new vocations arriving at the altar; on the other, the realization that the process experienced by the Heralds of the Gospel enters a different phase, more visible and apparently more stable, although many questions remain open about the long period of blockage that preceded this moment.