CI Times Weekly | Current Issue 274 | 25 October 2008
Turama! Remembering our loved ones who have passed on...
Each year on the 2nd of November, the Catholic Church remembers those who have passed on, especially our family members. We pray for them and ask God to grant them the joy and peace of eternal life.
It has become the custom in the Cook Islands to anticipate this day by a festival of light on the eve of all Souls Day, that is, on the evening of the 1st of November. This year Turama will be celebrated on Saturday evening, the 1st of November.
In St Joseph’s Cathedral Parish, there will be a Requiem Mass (Mass of the Dead) at 6pm on Saturday evening. At the Mass, water will be blessed and distributed to families, who will then take the blessed water to their family graves where a short prayer service will take place. At the end of the prayer service, the blessed water will be sprinkled on the graves.
After the Requiem Mass, the Bishop and priests will conduct short prayer services at the cemetery at Nukutere College and then at the Catholic cemetery in Panama. Other graves in the area will also be blessed and sprinkled with blessed water if families request it.
As families gather around their graves, the children can be told about their ancestors and some of their family stories. Turama is a family celebration recalling deceased loved ones. Bishop Stuart O’Connal
Bishop of Rarotonga.
