Editors’ Note: Pilgrims of Healing and Hope commemorates the centennial of the founding of CNEWA in 1926 as a papal initiative of healing and hope.
This series will profile the men and women whose time, treasure, talent — and faith — have brought to life this unique effort of the Holy See. For generations, their generosity in support of the works of the Eastern churches has empowered each community of faith as they strive to follow the lesson of the Good Samaritan to “go and do likewise,” helping to bind the wounds of a broken world.
By age 22, Maria Pietrella had finished law school and was working at an international law firm in Rome. Yet when a lawyer suggested she study canon law while working full time, she spent 10 more years going to school all while raising her small child with her husband and giving birth to a second.
Three of those years were dedicated to learning how to work in the Roman Rota, the church’s central appellate court and the primary trial court for cases reserved to the Holy See by law or decree.
“Today I can tell everybody [my accomplishments were] not because I am a superwoman … but just because the Lord really wanted me there,” Ms. Pietrella said.
Ms. Pietrella left civil law practice to work for the Holy See, which included “some very critical, very confidential” cases. She was still in Rome when Catholic Near East Welfare Association decided to expand the reach of its presence there. She helped CNEWA navigate civil and church law.
“To me, to cooperate in this, was an honor,” she said.
In 2022, Ms. Pietrella and her family moved to New York, answering a vocational call as members of the Neocatechumenal Way to proclaim the love of God wherever it was needed through its Missio ad Gentes missionary apostolate.
In a Vatican ceremony, Pope Francis sent them and others to be missionary families. They left everything in Rome behind and joined a priest, a seminarian and several lay people to build up the Missio ad Gentes apostolate, based at Our Lady of Montserrat Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The Diocese of Brooklyn had closed the parish in 2010, but in 2013, at the request of the former bishop, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, the church became the hub for the local evangelization efforts of Missio ad Gentes.
“We work among the poor — poor in every sense,” Ms. Pietrella said, “people who really need a word of hope and a word of love.”
The goal of Missio ad Gentes is to witness to Jesus Christ through friendship and in the ordinary encounters and tasks of daily life, she explained. Its pastoral initiatives range from catechesis to Christmas programs and barbecues in the park for street people.
“We are there just to show the love of God,” she said.
“At the same time, I work a lot as a canon lawyer,” she added. Several dicasteries of the Holy See have asked her to continue as an advocate of the Roman Rota, while she also works as a judge for the tribunal of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
With CNEWA in Italy now operational as a national entity, she continues to help with counsel.
“For the good of people, for the good of the church,” CNEWA does “an amazing job,” she said.
Catholics are called to be “a concrete sign in this world of the immense love that God has for every man and every woman, not just for the Catholic,” she said.
“The church, by its intrinsic nature, is called to go out and reach everybody, especially who is farther away and more in need. This is what both Missio ad Gentes and CNEWA practically do.”