St Tutilo and Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Monk, and gifted musician. Tutilo was an Irish monk who lived in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. He was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Gall in Switzerland.

A good-humoured person of many talents, he was a poet, portrait painter, sculptor, orator, architect and mechanic. But his greatest talent was music. He could play all the instruments known to the monks. Together with his friend, Blessed Notker, he composed much church music and taught at the abbey school.

Only three poems and one hymn remain of all Tutilo's works. But his paintings and sculptures are still found today in several cities of Europe. Tutilo is said to have been a 'giant in strength, stature and wits'. He praised God through all his work. St Tutilo died in 915.

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Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Today is also the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. On 11 February 2018, Pope Francis decreed that this ancient devotion to Our Lady be celebrated annually as a Memorial on the day after Pentecost.

The decree reflects on the history of Marian theology in the Church's liturgical tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers. It says Saint Augustine and Pope Saint Leo the Great both reflected on the Virgin Mary's importance in the mystery of Christ. "In fact the former [St Augustine] says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter [St. Leo the Great] says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church."

The decree says these reflections are a result of the "divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer".

Scripture, the decree says, depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25). There she became the Mother of the Church when she "accepted her Son's testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal."

In 1964, the decree says, Pope Paul VI "declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as 'Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother' and established that 'the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles'".

Read the full Decree here: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20180211_decreto-mater-ecclesiae_en.html