{"id":6702,"date":"2006-07-25T00:31:03","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T00:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/lifeguards-of-jesus.html"},"modified":"2006-07-25T00:31:03","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T00:31:03","slug":"lifeguards-of-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/lifeguards-of-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"Lifeguards of Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reaching out on the Italian beaches:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Backed by volunteers wearing red Baywatch-style T-shirts and calling themselves the Lifeguards of Jesus, Father Vito and another priest were on hand to offer penance and absolution from 10 at night until one in the morning. <\/p>\n

"Some people were a bit mistrustful and others were sarcastic. But in general the reaction was very positive," he said. <\/p>\n

Some 30 Lifeguards of Jesus – drawn from a Catholic lay association, the Movimento pro Sanctitate – fanned out from the nearby Church of St Peter to fish for souls among the resort’s night-time revellers. Their outpost on the sands was made up of a crucifix, a host in a monstrance and a lifebelt. <\/p>\n

The Adriatic coast is a dance culture mecca in which even the Almighty would at times struggle to be heard over the riffs and breaks. <\/p>\n

"But," said the priest at St Peter’s, Monsignor Vincenzo Amadio, "we have to get in touch with people in the places where they are. We are changing from a church that called people in – ringing bells and the like – to one that goes after them."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think this is the Movement’s page<\/a><\/p>\n

In English<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reaching out on the Italian beaches: Backed by volunteers wearing red Baywatch-style T-shirts and calling themselves the Lifeguards of Jesus, Father Vito and another priest were on hand to offer penance and absolution from 10 at night until one in the morning. "Some people were a bit mistrustful and others were sarcastic. But in general…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLifeguards of Jesus - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/lifeguards-of-jesus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lifeguards of Jesus - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Reaching out on the Italian beaches: Backed by volunteers wearing red Baywatch-style T-shirts and calling themselves the Lifeguards of Jesus, Father Vito and another priest were on hand to offer penance and absolution from 10 at night until one in the morning. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}