Mary Patroness of Madagascar

In 1971 Madagascar celebrated the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Catholic priest in Fianarantsoa. Archbishop Gilbert Ramanantoanina placed that centennial year under the sign of the sanctification of the family by proposing the Holy Family as a model. In an interview given to the Catholic newspaper Lumière, the archbishop recalled the salient events of the first hundred years of Catholic life in his church district... He evoked the personality of Fr. Finaz who celebrated the first Mass at Tananarive in 1885 and lived as a clandestine priest during the persecution. With him the evangelization of Fianarantsoa had begun. Father Finaz succeeded in thwarting the hostility of Protestants and rented a modest cabin, where he set up an oratory with an altar surmounted by a statue of the Blessed Virgin. At the first prayer gathering, he began teaching hymns to the children and showed them how to pray the Rosary. His constant recourse to the Immaculate Virgin allowed Fr. Finaz, in spite of seemingly insurmountable difficulties, to obtain from the queen and the prime minister the concession of two lots of land to establish the Mission: the first one was granted on December 8, 1871, the second one on the very same day one year later. Earlier on, in 1867, another missionary, Fr. Castets, had composed a hymnal introduced by these words: "O Mary, Mother without blemish, we, the Madagascan people, choose you as our Patroness and our strength." This commitment is still valid and the Madagascans continue to faithfully pray, to the Virgin Mary in particular, in the numerous grottos of Our Lady of Lourdes erected throughout the country.