Rome office inundated with requests for JPII prayer cards, relics

Catholic News Service ^ | March 2, 2007

[NYer]

ROME (CNS) -- The Rome diocesan office charged with promoting the sainthood cause of Pope John Paul II has exceeded its postage budget because of increased requests for prayer cards and relics of the late pope.

"We were getting about 50 requests a day, but overnight it grew to between 500 and 1,000 requests," a spokeswoman for the office said March 2.

"We could not have foreseen this demand," she said. "It's an avalanche."

Franciscan Brother Chris Gaffrey, who assists the office with English translations, told Catholic News Service that the vast majority of requests in late February and early March were coming via e-mail from the United States.

CNS had published a story about the cards and relics Feb. 26 and dozens of Web sites and blogs, or Web logs, ran links to the story.

The prayer cards and relics, a small piece of one of the white cassocks worn by Pope John Paul, always will be distributed free of charge, but without an increase in donations the office cannot afford to mail them, Brother Gaffrey said.

While one writer kindly sent the office his express mail account number, others wrote requesting cards for their entire parish without even thinking of what it would cost to ship them from Italy, he said.

An individual prayer card, relic and copy of the cause's magazine, Totus Tuus, could be mailed to the United States for about $5, Brother Gaffrey said.

Several options for sending donations can be found on the official Web site of Pope John Paul's sainthood cause -- www.JohnPaulIIBeatification.org -- which was experiencing interruptions in service because of the increased traffic in early March.

The mailing address of the office is: Postulazione Giovanni Paolo II, Vicariato di Roma, Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano 6A, 00184 Rome, Italy.

[NYer]

"We were getting about 50 requests a day, but overnight it grew to between 500 and 1,000 requests," a spokeswoman for the office said March 2.

The power of the Internet!! One of the contributors to this great groundswell demand, was Rocco Palmo. Here is his follow up.

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What a week, gang -- what a week.

Buzz spread quickly after yesterday's post on the free cassock-bits offered by the organizers of The John Paul Cause, and word from Rome earlier today indicated that the Vicariate was downright inundated: 250 requests yesterday, over 600 today.

The increased demand has been such that the Magnificenzo's Postulation can no longer send the "ex indumentis" mini-swaths (which are for private devotion only as the late pontiff isn't yet beatified) on a gratis basis. Future requests will require a "small donation" to handle the postage -- or else the office responsible for Wojtyla's sainthood would have to pull a San Diego and, literally, go "bankrupt." And, really, who wants that?

"[W]ith such a demand and no donations to cover postage, there is no way they can send these cards to everyone," says Br Chris Gaffrey, a Franciscan theologian speaking for the office, where he works part-time. "To do so, it would literally cost them thousands of Euros daily and bankrupt the Office of the Postulation (whose budget isn't all that extensive to begin with). So, they had to make a decision to limit sending the cards to those who can send a small donation to cover the cost of postage."

So, say, US$3 or $5 sent over per request would seem to do the trick... not too much to ask, eh?

If you're planning to seek one of these out, please keep this in mind -- and, when you do, realize that when St JP is formally enrolled to the honors of the altar, the credit for getting him there will, in a way, yet again be yours.