Totus Tuus - Totus 2us

ITALY - ITALIA

When Karol Woytyla was elected Bishop of Rome, he took Rome .. & Italy to his heart. During his 26 & a half years as Pope, Blessed John Paul II was a pilgrim on 146 pastoral visits in Italy, as well as 748 visits within the Diocese of Rome or to Castel Gandolfo. Click here to see more (with videos & links) about Beato Giovanni Paolo II's pastoral visits in Italy, at which he frequently met with his 'carissimi giovani'.

In the Jubilee Year 2000 World Youth Day was celebrated in Rome, at which there were over 2 million young people - the largest gathering in the history of Europe.

Preghiere in italiano su Totus2us

Il Santo Rosario in italiano
_{- È possibile scaricare gli mp3 di questo rosario qui o su iTunes}

La Coroncina della Divina Misericordia       ♦

_{Totus2us has mp3 reflections on the Italian saints: St Benedict of Norcia, St Bonaventure, St Catherine of Siena, St Dominic Savio, St Francis of Assisi, San Gaetano Tiene, St Maria Goretti, St Padre Pio, St Pius X & St Thomas Aquinas.} 

Here below you can listen to responses to Totus2us podcasts given by Italians
- grazie mille a tutti     ♥

_{You can download individual mp3 recordings by right clicking where you see this diamond  ♦}

Adriana       ♦

_{"Our Lady is my mother and I'm so happy to know that she's guiding me to Christ in my life."}

_{Adriana gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Alessia       ♦

_{"Ringrazio la Madonna per aver cambiato la mia vita."}

Andrea       ♦

_{"Mary is our mother, is the mother of everyone and of course is the mother of Christ but she represents the image of the best mother that could exist."}

Anna       ♦

_{"If you want to be with Maria always, think about your heart, her heart."}

_{Anna gives her qualcosa su Maria in English and Italian.}

Sister Bruna       ♦

_{"St John Bosco wouldn't stop praying the rosary with the boys because the rosary is a biblical prayer. That's what Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes had - the rosary. The rosary is to pray to God. And meditating on the mystery is just like you read a description in the mystery of Jesus. So, when the family used to pray together saying the rosary, the family that prays together, stays together. So we have to revive our faith in the rosary, we have not to be ashamed. We don't need to preach, it's the way we live our life, and not to be afraid to say our faith in the rosary. Repetition is good; repetition revives the mind. We get bored with repetition, not with the rosary. And then Our Lady is there to guide us to her Divine Son and we have to remember every time she appears, it is with the rosary."}

_{Sister Bruna is a Salesian Sister of St John Bosco.}

Dana       ♦

_{"Looking at an image of Our Lady gives you an unbelievable strength and a hope that you look forward to good things happening to you and the strength to do your best, to help the other and not just to give up."}

_{Dana gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Daniele       ♦

_{"Mary is the mother of us all. "}

Daniella       ♦

_{"Mary is a great friend and she is the best person who can help us to pray in a better way to God and to Jesus. She is the living proof that God came to earth and became man, and she always helps us as a mother throughout our difficulties in life. We just really have to lift our eyes and pray to her and she never fails to help."}

Donnatella       ♦

_{"Mary is my mother, my sweet mother, and of course it's not possible not to love her - she helps me to know and to love Jesus.
Maria, La Madonna, mia madre, come la madre di tutti, è la madre, la dolce madre, che ci aiuta.."}

_{Donnatella is a member of the Pro Sanctity Movement, whose prayer to Mary is
"O Immaculate Heart of Mary, true model of every holiness, give trust to become saints."}

Doretta       ♦

_{"Holy Mary is an example of grace and patience and understanding - that's what every woman should be about.
La Madonna è un esempio di grazia, di pazienza e di comprensione verso tutti."}

Elena       ♦

_{"For me, Mary is a beautiful friend and a mother. I often talk with her and ask her counsel for my life, for my job, for my relationship with colleagues, and with parents and family and friends. I speak to her really like a friend who can help me every time.
Per me Maria è una splendida cristiana amica."}

Francesca       ♦

_{"On our honeymoon, we went to visit John XXIII … during the audience he turned to my husband and said: 'You now have a new friend, the Madonna.' As a result of which my husband had, till the end of his life, a strong devotion to Our Lady. From being a rather shy man, he became anything but, and was happy to lead pilgrimages, and he imbued in me this strong and loving devotion to Our Lady, which I think and hope I will have for the rest of my life."}

Father Francesco       ♦

_{"We came to World Youth Day Madrid with a group of 400 people from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Cyprus and Iraq; we have also Israeli Arabs, not just Palestinian Arabs; we are from the Neocatechumenical Way. So all these youth coming from all these countries in the Middle East are making a very deep way of faith; and so also this way of faith makes possible this communion between us, between our cultures, in Jesus Christ."}

Frederica       ♦

_{"Mary is for me a mother, a friend and I have been a non-believer for a very long time, for 29 years, and then I went to Medjugorje."}

Gemma       ♦

_{"Mary means everything to me."}

Giuseppe      ♦

_{"Mary for me is not just Jesus Christ's mother, but she is another figure whom you can look up to, and the motherly side. So when you pray it's almost like as if you were talking to your mother, and therefore a more familiar approach. So that's why when I pray it comes easier also to pray to Mary...
Per me Maria non è soltanta la madre di Gesù ma anche una madre per tutti quelli che credono."}

Jan    

_{"My relationship with Mary started becoming closer and closer when I went to Medjugorje a year ago. In her I found a mother, I found forgiveness and felt peace, and when I came back to my city that was the only thing that I could think about and look for in the months that came. And I started praying the rosary every day and she started bringing me closer to Jesus, day by day, and what happened next is I started discovering again the sacraments and the Mass."       ♦}

_{In his response about Papa Giovanni Paolo II, Jan talks of how his words and love have inspired and helped him, and of how reading St Louis de Montfort's Devotion to Mary made him think of Karol Woytyla reading the same book while he was an 'underground' seminarian. Jan, a film maker who directed the music video for Olen Cesari's Anema e core, has chosen a quote from JP2's Letter to Artists.       ♦}

_{Blessed John Paul II: "Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.}

_{Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy. May you be guided and inspired by the mystery of the Risen Christ, whom the Church in these days contemplates with joy.}

_{May the Blessed Virgin Mary be with you always: she is the “tota pulchra” portrayed by countless artists, whom Dante contemplates among the splendours of Paradise as “beauty that was joy in the eyes of all the other saints”.}

_{“From chaos there rises the world of the spirit”. These words of Adam Mickiewicz, written at a time of great hardship for his Polish homeland, prompt my hope for you: may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal. With my heartfelt good wishes!" - from JPII's Letter to Artists (1999) (which you can also read in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese & Spanish).}

Lidia       ♦

_{"I went to Medjugorje and my life changed… Mary helps me today, every day, forever.
Io sono andata a Medjugorje e questa esperienza m'a cambiato totalmente la vida .."}

Maika       ♦

_{"La Madonna è la madre di tutti noi."}

Manuella       ♦

_{"Our Holy Mother guides my life, my friendships, my work and my choices of every day."}

_{Manuella gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Manuella       ♦

_{"I don't see why we cannot ask our Mum to protect us and intercede for us. ..
Io prego la Madonna perché interceda per me presso suo filio and presso Dio. .. Lei è una bellissima Mama, è una santa Mama."}

Marco       ♦

_{"Our Lady is the mother of Jesus and a massive inspiration for me.
Maria, la mamma di Gesù, è una ispirazione incredibile per me."}

Maria-Angela       ♦

_{"Mary is our mother in heaven.
Maria è la nostra Mamma celeste."}

Maria Concetta       ♦

_{"In the institute, we have a special devotion to Mary, she is the one who gives us the trust to become saints, since our goal is to become saints. So we invoke Mary under the title 'Our Lady of trust' give us trust to become saints. So Mary is for us a model, a way in any situation in life, in any difficulty, we look at Mary, she gives us really the trust with her smile to go on in life no matter what the difficulties will be. I would like to conclude with a prayer we say a 1000 times a day:
'O Immaculate Heart of Mary, true model of every holiness, give us trust to become saints.'"}

_{Maria-Concetta gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Martha       ♦

_{"Mary is really my mother and she is very near and behind me all the time, all the minutes of my life. To be Christian, the first thing necessary is to be a little child. I am a little daughter of Mary and I have just to go to the embrace of my mother and just really often tell her all my things, all that I have in my heart; like a daughter to her mother, with a really deep confidence. And the mother listens to you like a mother, with lots of love, and she brings you to her son, Jesus, and teaches you to love Jesus with more and more deepness and more and more love. ..
Sono felicissima di avere una mamma così bella, così presente, così vera, e per me è tutto.."}

Mattia       ♦

_{"I want with all my heart to love the Virgin Mary, especially recently, because in the past I have been really far away from her love and the love of Jesus and the Father. I hope that through her I may be saved and she can guide me to do what the Father wants us to do in this life, to live as Jesus Christ said we should live. I pray to her and I ask Mary that I can always live full of life, full of joy and it's a lot for me. And I want to love her very, very much."}

Father Raniero       ♦

_{Frankie, from the Totus2us team, has some Top Chat with Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap - about the essential gift of the Eucharist, the new Pentecost in the Church, preparing for Christmas and preaching to the Papal household.  If you'd like to read/listen to more by Fr Raniero, visit his website.}

Silvia       ♦

_{"Mary is the most important person in my life because she is my reference about love. Love is the most important thing in my life, in the life of every single person. Mary touched me, she is a teacher about love and she improves my way of loving. I want to learn from her to love people, to love life, to love everybody in my ordinary life. She is the milestone in my life and I know she observes me in everything in my life. I know she cures every aspect of my life and I can consider her as the basis of my life. I think she is the peace of my life .. I love to pray to her as the Queen of Peace and everybody can ask her for peace in the heart .. Mary is very present in these moments of the history of the world. She is very concentrated in what is happening in this world and she is not indifferent to our destiny.. I firmly believe that she can influence in a very important way the destiny of humanity in these moments.
Maria è la maestra d'amore"}

Stefania       ♦

_{"As an adult now I think of the Virgin Mary as my spiritual mother … she seems to be always there and she is a beautiful image to relate to, as a woman to woman as well."}

_{Stefania gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Valentina       ♦

_{"Ringrazio la Madonna per tutto quello che mi dà ogni giorno."}

Valeria       ♦

_{"When we pray the rosary together in the family, I feel there is a great unity amongst ourselves and with Our Lady."}

_{Valeria is from Italy, and she gives her qualcosa su Maria in English & Italian.}

Willy       ♦

_{"Ho avuto un grande incontro con la Madonna a Medjugorje un anno fa. La via della mia vita è cambiata e ringrazio tantissima la Madonna perché mi accompagna ogni giorno."}