Sassari. Great participation last Sunday in the procession of Corpus Christi and at the final ceremony in Piazza d’Italia with the elevation of the Blessed Sacrament. At the end of the 6pm pontifical presided over in the cathedral of San Nicola by Archbishop Gian Franco Saba, the Eucharistic procession began, with the participation of the congregations, the confraternities, the representatives of the parishes and the laity, which ended in the square of Italy with the elevation of the Blessed Sacrament. «In recent months, in the squares of our city, including this one in which we find ourselves, and of Italy and of many nations, writings have been displayed that invoke the gift of peace, that the clash of arms cease – said the Archbishop Saba at the altar set up under the Province building –. This evening we are brought here, to the living square of our city, the heart of his life, the prince of peace, Jesus. We ask him to help the social virtues of the Eucharist mature in our lives.” The solemn ceremony ended with the singing of Te Deumthe Eucharistic hymn written by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
And on the day dedicated to the solemnity of Corpus Christi According to an ancient tradition, the Wanderers’ Guild celebrates the Lot of the Obrieri and the Oath of the Gremianti in the morning. On June 2 the ritual was renewed once again, a surviving sign of belonging to the Confraria de Itria, present in Sassari since at least 1477. In the morning, before the 11am mass, the congregation gathered in solemn form in the chapel it owned in Sant’Agostino, where Our Lady of the Good Way is located. Monsignor Gian Carlo Zichi, archpriest of the Turritano Chapter and vicar of the archbishop for lay aggregations, was present, the two moments proceeded, the recitation of the Oath and the extraction of the names of the obrieri, who will take office on the occasion of the major feast of the gremio, the second Sunday of August. Nicola Senes, senior gremiante, coordinated the ceremony, replacing the secretary Cristian Zedda, absent for health reasons. And Zedda will be the major obriere for 2024-25, while Gianni Manca will become the candelabra obriere and Alessandro Usai will become the chapel obriere. Furthermore, he has been welcomed, and will therefore wear the characteristic from now on cugliettu, or the novice’s dress, Samuel Digosciu, eight years old. Dean Edoardo Toschi Pilo was instead awarded the Gold Star of Our Lady of the Good Way for 75 years of gremial life: in 1949, already at the age of three, he began to wear the gremio habit in a period in which children and teenagers were not part of the activities of the guilds, which was reserved only for workers of the various arts.
The mass, presided over by Monsignor Zichi, was concelebrated by Father Silvano Marongiu and Don Costantino Poddighe, parish priest of San Pio X in Li Punti. Two papal gifts were used: Pope Francis’ chasuble and Pope Benedict’s chalice.
For the occasion, the relic was displayed in the church ex corpore of Blessed Carlo Acutis, the fifteen-year-old who will soon be canonized and who the gremio proposes to its young people as a model of holiness. Next Sunday 9 June, the monthly commemoration of Our Lady of the Good Path, at 11 am, in Sant’Agostino, the solemn mass will be celebrated as usual and the relic of the Blessed will be exposed for veneration.
The solemnity of Corpus Domini has been one of the two festivals of the Wayfarers since 1633. The election of the obrieri is mentioned in the Chapters of 7 August of the same year. But there is also another tradition, which is repeated on the same day. The Wayfarers, as has been the case for some time, carried the canopy covering the Blessed Sacrament and the archbishop throughout the journey, thus acting as an escort of honor for their special patron.
