ROME — When Darren and Tina Hogan of Mount Carmel, Conn., found their place amid more than 25,000 people in St. Peter's Square the morning of Jan. 4, they had a strategy: Stay near the sides.

That's where Pope John Paul II passes in his “popemobile” — and where they thought they might have a chance at a papal blessing for their baby, 5-month-old Maria Regina.

The Hogans, natives of Canada, were among the 4,000 pilgrims from the United States and Canada in Rome to end the Jubilee Year and celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Legionaries of Christ and the Regnum Christi Movement. And when the Holy Father drove toward St. Anne's Gate to return to his residence and stopped to kiss one more baby, the Hogans had the highlight of their pilgrimage. (Find more baby encounters on page 15.)

“We had no expectation of getting close,” Darren Hogan said. “We never dreamed that it could happen. Our desire was just to see him.” But to have the baby “blessed and kissed by the Holy Father was a source of great joy.”

All told, more than 12,000 Legionary and Regnum Christi pilgrims from 33 countries gathered for 11 days of festivities to close out the Great Jubilee in Rome.

The high-octane event was more than a pilgrimage. The first several days included conferences and expositions at the Legionaries' Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University. Members of the Regnum Christi apostolic movement shared insights on their work in different countries to win the culture for Christ via mass media outlets, more than 145 schools, and associations to evangelize the culture.

For instance, workers at CIDECO, which helps the poor of Latin America develop new economic initiatives, could compare notes with Americans like Lupita Assad of Dallas, Texas, a nurse and director of Helping Hand Medical Missions, which takes North American medical expertise to Latin America.

The group then shifted focus to its anniversary celebrations:

l They rang in the New Year in a bitterly cold St. Peter's Square with the Holy Father, who made a surprise appearance from his apartment window.

l They celebrated the ordination Jan. 2 of 37 new Legionary priests by Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy.

l They prayed the rosary that night with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano in the Vatican Gardens.

l They marked the 60th anniversary of their founding with a solemn Eucharistic Liturgy Jan. 3 concelebrated by the Legionaries, several bishops, and many diocesan priests who are members of Regnum Christi.

l On Jan. 4, they had the special audience with the Holy Father in the morning and in the evening a lively Youth and Family Encounter featuring live musical performances and a talk by Father Marcial Maciel, the 80-year-old founder of the Legionaries and Regnum Christi still serving as their general director.

Fittingly, it all ended with the closing of the Holy Door at St. Peter's Jan. 6.

Of the 37 new priests, 10 are from the United States: Jon Budke of Underwood, Minn., brothers John and Martin Connor of Baltimore, David Daly of St. Louis, Anselmo Hernandez of Brooklyn, N.Y., Vincent Higgins of Millbrook, N.Y., Andre LaSana of Dover, Del., Kevin Lixey of Swartz Creek, Mich., Edward McIlmail of Philadelphia and Neil McNeil of Abbeville, La.

A Loss for Words

Father McIlmail said the grace of his ordination is the “hardest one to articulate. It's beyond words” — a tough admission, he said, for a former newspaperman like himself.

A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Father McIlmail spent years as a journalist before discerning his call to the priesthood and religious life. He was assistant city editor of a paper in Pennsylvania when he heard the call.

While he finds it difficult to express his thoughts about his ordination, the words flow when Father McIlmail reflects on the special audience Jan. 4, when he and his fellow Legionaries sat near Pope John Paul II in front of St. Peter's Basilica, opposite several hundred consecrated women of Regnum Christi. They listened to the Pope's words of support and challenge for the Legionaries, Regnum Christi, and their founder.

“I greet each and every one of you,” the Holy Father said, “with the hope that this occasion will constitute a strong support for your faith in the Lord Jesus and your decision to bear witness to him before your brothers and sisters.” In response to introductory words by Father Maciel, the Pope said, “I especially appreciate his express confirmation of the fidelity to the Successor of Peter that characterizes you. Your communion with the Pope attests to your full insertion into the mystery of the Church's unity.”

Quoting St. Catherine of Siena, John Paul laid down a challenge: “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire,” he said (find the full text on page 15).

Father McIlmail said it was moving for him to be in the presence of the father who raised him, William McIlmail of Philadelphia, the father founder of his priestly congregation, and the Holy Father. “The three earthly fathers of my life were all there together,” he said. “All of my personal history came together in that moment.

“We heard great praise for our founder and for the promise the Legionaries hold for the Church,” he said. “That hit home for me: the tremendous responsibility we have on our shoulders. The Holy Father has said mankind has never been at such a crossroads. We can seize the future and make it work for God and man.”

Father McIlmail sees great grace in God's call to collaborate with him at this pivotal moment when “the new springtime of evangelization is beginning to bud. It will take a lifetime to work it out,” he said.

From Minneapolis to Rome

Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis, participated in the ordinations, anointing the hands of many of the new priests. It was especially poignant for him to anoint one of the young men, Father Neil McNeil, whom he first knew as one of his diocesan seminarians when he was bishop of Lafayette, La.

When Neil left the diocesan seminary, Archbishop Flynn asked him to stay in touch, which he did, and encouraged him to look into the priesthood with a religious order, particularly the Legionaries.

“It was a magnificent ordination, and the Legionaries came in from all over the world to participate in it,” Archbishop Flynn wrote in his archdiocesan paper, The Catholic Spirit. “I think there were more than 1,000 staying in the seminary in which I resided while in Rome.

“As I watched Father Neil and spent those few days with him, I could not help but see again God's plan,” he wrote.

“Surely Neil McNeil has grown in loving God out of his special place.”

The founder, Father Marciel, also focused on God's plan — for lay people — in words directed to the predominantly lay Regnum Christi members.

“God continues to call us every single day,” he said. “Every grace, every event or circumstance that he permits in our life is an opportunity to give thanks, the possibility for a personal encounter with Christ, a new call to repay his love generously.

“Before you is the hint of a future full of vitality, with all its hopes and challenges,” Father Maciel said. “Build up the Church with your conscious and total ‘yes’ to God's call in your life.”