Internationally renowned expert to visit Perth.
By Robert Hiini
A HUMBLE community in Perth’s southern suburbs dedicated to living the spirituality of Italian mystic Luisa Piccarreta has scored a coup in securing the speaking talents of world Piccarreta expert Fr Carlos Massieu.The Mexican priest will speak at their Casa di Luisa Piccarreta (House of Luisa Piccarreta) in Spearwood on July 18, 20 and 21 as well as at Catholic churches in Glendalough, Midland, Mosman Park and Beaconsfield. He will also be a guest speaker at the vocations conference taking place at St Thomas More College, adjacent to the University of WA, from July 13-17.The Casa di Luisa Piccarreta was established in 2004 by friends Jenny Troy and Michele Grabsch, fulfilling the vision they shared following a conference in Morninigton, Victoria, in 2001 on the Divine Will – the private revelation the mystic is said to have received over the course of her mostly bed-ridden life. After the conference, Ms Troy returned to her family and primary school teaching position in Perth, beginning a Luisa Piccarreta prayer group with five of her friends. Ms Grabsch went home in Melbourne, wondering if God was calling her to build an apostolate with her Perth-based friend.
In 2002, she made the move west, initially living in Yangebup before taking a further leap of faith – purchasing a house with the Troy family in 2004. The families also pray together whenever they can and host a prayer meeting on Tuesdays as well as all-day Adoration every Wednesday from 8am to 6pm (last year they held three months of perpetual adoration from March to May). Luisa Piccarreta was born in rural town of Corato, Italy in 1865 and was bedridden from the age of 16 to her death, aged 82, surviving, it is said, for the last 65 years of her life entirely on the Blessed Sacrament, without consuming food or drink. She is also said to have experienced visions of God from the age of 12 and wrote 36 manuscripts of her experiences under obedience from 1899 to 1938 that detail private revelations made about the fulfillment of the Lord’s Prayer that His will “be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Her cause for beatification has been before the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints at the Vatican since 2005 after diocesan investigations were concluded in the same year, having been opened in 1994.
Fr Massieu, a former mechanical engineer, was asked by Mgr Carmelo Cassati, the then-Archbishop of Luisa’s home-diocese, Triani, to organise an International Congress on the Divine Will in Costa Rica with Marianela Rosario Perez, the head of a group of Luisa Piccarreta enthusiasts in Florida, who will also be speaking in Perth.
For more info on the talks of Fr Massieu and Marianela Perez see Panorama or call Jenny on
9494 2604.