"Sacred Echo": when God wants to get our attention, God doesn't just whisper
once and move on. The message comes to us in echoes from many sources and in
many forms…
So the
Californian journalist
Cathleen Falsani
defines "Sacred
Echo" in her article on
Massimo Coppo at the time
of the Conclave:
"Sacred Echo" presages
Pope choice, by Cathleen
Falsani.
Here how the place of prayer is risen in the center of Assisi with the name of
Sacred Echo.
Every night and in every season Massimo Coppo sleeps outdoors dressed in a
sackcloth and barefoot under the porticoes of the Basilica of St. Francis. Under
the porticoes, mainly in the evening, people come also to speak with him, and to
pray. Late in the night also Marcello Ciai arrives, the man who thanks to God in
1980 founded the community of which Massimo was part from the beginning, and
then in 1991 the Association Iaca. Because of this precarious health and the
rigor of some winter nights, Marcello and Massimo addressed question to the City
council to have a small space where they could withdraw to pray: a plea for help
for a sick person, which was accompanied by an attentive gesture of the
municipal administration. It has been restored with diligence, the old and
unhealthy abandoned ex-urinal, which certainly bore no luster to that suggestive
stretch of "San Gabriele dell' Addolorata" Street, under the "Piazzetta delle
Erbe". It was transformed into a small but suggestive chapel, certainly of
non-noble origin: but also our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, was born in
a stable! This place attracts the attention of many Italian and foreign tourists
and pilgrims: they photograph it and shove tickets with prayer requests in the
slot that was prepared on purpose in the wooden door, demands that Marcello and
Massimo honour praying there in the night.
On
February 5, 2015 Marcello
sick, asks Massimo
to go just him alone into the
night from the porticoes
of the Basilica of Saint Francis
in pilgrimage
to the
Sacred Echo, to do this right
for Marcello.
Massimo had complained before
with him, because sometimes he felt lonely and
suffering also due to the cold
of these winter days
and he had confessed
that sometimes he was crying.
Despite the rain Massimo
fulfilled Marcello's wish of
the pilgrimage to the Sacred
Echo and here's the message that
arrived to Marcello at two o’clock in the night from the
part of Massimo:
2:17 Found
this ticket at the Sacred Echo:
"In my heart, this evening,
I think and I
pray for all the
lonely people, who suffer and
who are crying.
Amen." !
Someone had put this card
into the slot of the door
where there is written: "Put
here your request of prayer"
We believe that this is a real
miracle of the love and the mercy
of God. Thank you, Jesus,
our Lord, may you always be blessed,
praised and loved with
all our hearts!
