Mathis Leadership Liturgical group at St. Peter's Basilica
Notre Dame, IN - The Mathis Liturgical Leadership Program (MLLP), part of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy at the McGrath Institute for Church Life, visited Rome in May to explore what it means to build a Eucharistic culture. The trip provided a select group of Church leaders with education and formation opportunities that will assist them in developing Eucharistic cultures in their own faith communities.
Seventeen members of the program’s inaugural cohort, which runs from 2022 through 2024, visited Rome to discover how the beauty of the Eucharist has been brought to life in different ways over time and across the major religious orders.
“The program asks what it means to build a Eucharistic culture in a particular place. The gift of Rome is that it allows us to explore how the Eucharistic culture took shape in what ended up becoming the heart of the Catholic Church,” says Carolyn Pirtle, M.M., M.S.M., M.A., Program Director of the Center for Liturgy.
The group looked at the way Eucharistic cultures were built and developed in Rome by various religious communities. Participants were able to observe how the creation of a Eucharistic culture has been accomplished in very concrete ways throughout the Church’s history.
“We had the opportunity to explore how the Eucharistic charisms of the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits, each in their own way, brought the teachings of Christ and the beauty of the Eucharist to life in different ways,” adds Pirtle.
In addition to the Rome visit, the cohort will spend two years developing a project, teaching resources, and publications that will promote a Eucharistic culture and deeper affiliation with the Church in their parishes, schools, and dioceses. The MLLP is a two-year, cohort-based program offering priests, parish directors, educators, lay ministers, and other professionals working in the Church a unique opportunity for education and formation centered around major pastoral issues facing the Church today.
To learn more about the Mathis Liturgical Leadership Program and this year’s cohort, click here.
Contact: Maggie Scroope, program director of communications, McGrath Institute for Church Life, 574-631-0153, mscroope@nd.edu.