Former Grand Knight John Flynn of the Rev. Joseph Donnelly Council of the Knights of Columbus traveled to Lawrenceville today to continue the pilgrimage of the Knights of Columbus’ St. Joseph Icon.
Flynn was acting in his capacity as District Deputy for District 24 of the Knights of Columbus and was presenting the icon to the District Deputy of District 25 to continue its journey across the United States.
The icon has been at both Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Agnes churches in this parish for the past two weeks and has been the inspiration for both prayer and meditation as well as a special prayer service.
The pilgrimage began earlier this year in Nashville Tennessee, when the icon was introduced as the Knights’ new pilgrim prayer program. The icon was made by Elizabeth Bergeron based on a drawing by Alexandre Doboley and depicts St. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding the child Jesus. The drawing on which the icon is based is located at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada.
The Knights of Columbus (KofC) is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, with more than two million members in 16,000 councils worldwide.
The pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition for the Knights, in which every few years a new icon is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. Copies of the icon are distributed to each of the Knights’ more than 75 jurisdictions, and travel from council to council.
Councils at parishes use the icon as centerpieces for “rosary-based” prayer services, and follow the same pattern since 1979 when. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first icon of the program. Approximately 175,000 council and parish prayer services have been held with about 22 million participants since its inception..
The St. Joseph icon now circulating was inspired by Patris corde, (The Heart of a Father), Pope Francis’ 2020 apostolic letter on the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Joseph as patron of the universal Church. The Pontiff has expressed appreciation to the Knights for making the St. Joseph icon and the saint it honors a “Central focus of our spiritual efforts.”
