At the start of the celebrations for the 500 years of the birth of St. Philip Blacks

Come alive in the celebrations for the 500 years after the birth of Philip Blacks, popular Florentine saint.

Celebrations, started Dec. 8, continue now with a series of cultural events that will help to frame the history and current San Filippo.

Friday 13 February at 18, at the Hall of the Oratory in Via dell'Anguillara 25 in Florence, is scheduled for the first of these meetings, in collaboration with "Science & life ", and in the context of which will open the exhibition "Philip Blacks: a saint between culture and popular devotion ", set up in the same Oratory.

This will make it possible, as well as talk about the figure of the great saint, watch over these 500 years the signs of his presence and of the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Florence in urban context.

The first conference, on "Filippo Blacks: a saint between Florence and Rome at the time of the Counter ", will be held by Prof.. Giovanni Cipriani, Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence, while the following month, the 13 March, will be the turn of the Bishop of Ivrea, Bishop. Edoardo Cerrato, who will speak of Philip "great educator of the past in the emergency education today".

In April, always 13, Father Silvio Sorvillo speak on "San Filippo Blacks and his Congregation instar familias".

As part of the celebrations will be repeated, the 25 May at the Teatro della Pergola, the musical "Vanity of vanities", while the next day, the 26 may, is scheduled in San Firenze, the morning at 10, a concelebrated Mass with the bishops of Tuscany.

The anniversary program will go ahead with other initiatives to 21 July, birthday of St. Philip, when it will be a commemorative epigraph in place that recalls his birthplace in via dei Serragli.

On the same day, at 18 in Cathedral, Cardinal Giuseppe Betori preside at the Mass with the participation of the city authorities.

Nicola Nuti

By the number 51 - Year II of 11/02/2015