PORTLAND, Maine — Six parishes in the Diocese of Portland are partnering with the diocese’s Office of Vocations to offer Totus Tuus (“Totally Yours”) for the first time in Maine.
The program will come to the Parish of the Precious Blood in Caribou from July 8 to 13. Other locations will be Sanford, Lewiston, Scarborough, Waterville and Bangor.
Totus Tuus is a dynamic summer program for first- to 12th-graders that is led by a team of four college students and a diocesan seminarian. The team travels from parish to parish leading a weeklong program of learning and praying that demonstrates the joyful living of the Catholic faith. Through age-appropriate, dynamic, and faithful content, young people are motivated and equipped to live the call of the Gospel in today’s world.
“This program allows participants to encounter individuals who are joyful, living witnesses of the Catholic faith,” said Liam Gallagher, a seminarian of the Diocese of Portland who participated in the Totus Tuus sessions in Vermont last summer.
“Students develop a deeper sense of faith and strengthen their relationship with Jesus Christ. They take the lessons and spiritual gifts of this program with them for the rest of their lives,” Gallagher said.
According to Dave Guthro, communications director for the diocese, “Totus Tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt” (“I am totally yours, and all that I have is yours”) began the episcopal motto of Pope Saint John Paul II. Mary’s total devotion to the will of the Father is the model for Totus Tuus, as it seeks to respond to Pope Saint John Paul II’s urgent call for a “New Evangelization,” Guthro said via a press release.
For more information, to register online or for an overview of the program and its five pillars, visit www.portlanddiocese.org/vocations/totustuus or contact the diocese at (207) 773-6471.
