Holy Land USA, Honoring Fr. McGivney
Hartford, Conn. – (May 16, 2018) Archbishop Leonard Blair will celebrate
Mass on top
of Holy Land USA
on Saturday, August 11th,
in an event being planned in collaboration
with the Knights of Columbus and
the organization that owns the park.
The group organizing the Holy Land Mountaintop Mass in Waterbury hopes to
attract
several thousand people
from across the state. They believe it will increase
devotion to Venerable
Fr. Michael McGivney, founder of the
Knights of Columbus, whose cause for sainthood is being considered by the
Vatican. In the 1960s and 1970s,
Holy Land USA was a popular religious-themed
park that attracted more than
40,000 visitors annually.
“We think this will be a significant religious event for the city and the
State, in the
spirit of the new evangelization,”
said Father James Sullivan, pastor of Church of the Assumption in Ansonia
and one of the organizers of the Mass.
“It will be a celebration of Holy Land and Father McGivney, who grew up in
Waterbury.”
Chuck Pagano, Chairman of Holy Land USA, said, “Growing up in Waterbury
connected me with Holy Land as a
child because I saw it every evening from my childhood bed. Additionally,
there are numerous reminders of Father McGivney
around our city that still connect me with him. The event planned for August
is a perfect celebration for both important entities
that helped develop me over the years.”
In 1966, when Father Sullivan was six-years-old, his father took him and his aunt, a missionary nun visiting from Australia, to the top of Pine Hill to see Holy Land USA for the first time.
They walked up the hill, and from the 56-foot illuminated cross that came to
symbolize the park, they could survey the city below and see the places
where Father McGivney was born,
baptized and buried for 92 years until his body was moved to St. Mary Church
in New Haven. St. Mary’s was his first assignment as a priest. The Mass on
August 11th is
on the eve of
Father McGivney’s birthday, August 12, 1852. He died at 38 on August 14,
1890.
Father Sullivan often jokes that he and Father McGivney were neighbors, who lived near each other in Waterbury on the opposite sides of the Naugatuck River… a century apart.
The park, which is on an 18-acre site, once included biblical scenes from
the life of Jesus and recreations of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Holy Land was
developed by John Baptist Greco,
a Waterbury attorney, who began a volunteer organization called “Companions
of Christ,” whose purpose was to create and oversee the religious park,
which opened in 1955.
Holy Land fell into disrepair and eventually closed in 1984. When John
Greco died two years later, the property was given to the Religious Teachers
Filippini. Over the years, various
attempts to revive the park were unsuccessful, although the cross was
restored and later replaced in 2008 and dedicated during a Mass by
Archbishop Henry Mansell.
In 2013, Mayor Neil O’Leary and Waterbury businessman Fred “Fritz” Blasius
purchased the site from the Filippini Sisters. They eventually erected a new
and larger cross on the hill,
and there have been other initiatives to refurbish parts of the park, which
reopened on September 14, 2014 with an inaugural Mass. To prepare for the
August 11th Mass,
the park is
being repaved and landscaped.
“Anyone who has been through the area is familiar with Holy Land,” Father
Sullivan said. “Truck drivers passing on Route 84 would look for the cross.
People were moved to see it
illuminated at night on the hilltop. The mountain has always had a spiritual
mystique. It is a landmark, but also an icon.”
Father Sullivan had the idea for the Holy Land Mountaintop Mass following
the success of a Mass last year on the Feast of the Transfiguration, which
he celebrated on the top of
High Rock in Naugatuck. When he approached Archbishop Blair, Mayor
O’Leary and John Marrella, Supreme Advocate and General Counsel of the
Knights of Columbus, he got an
enthusiastic reception and moved forward.
“Being born in Waterbury, I can recall as a young boy when all the
churches were filled,” Father Sullivan said. “The spiritual climate of the
world has diminished with many forces pulling
us away from our devotion to God. The human heart, however, is made for God.
The prayer of many of us is that He be found again. By God’s grace, Holy
Land in Waterbury will help
to reignite that flame of love.”
People are encouraged to arrive between 3:00 and 4:00p.m. for the rosary,
followed by praise and worship music by the Christian group Hands and Feet.
The Mass will begin at 5:30p.m.
For further information about the Holy Land Mountaintop Mass, contact: father@assumptionansonia.church or info@holylandwaterbury.com
or
call (203) 735-7857.