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OUR LADY OF DIVINE MERCY

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Day 338: April 15 Our Lady of Divine Mercy, Allada, Republic of Benin, West Africa In the year 1856, Bishop Melchior de Marion Brésillac, founder of the Society of African Missions (SMA), asked Propaganda Fide (now the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) to send him and his missionaries to Dahomey (today known as the Republic of Benin). In 1860, the Holy See established the Apostolic Vicariate of Dahomey and entrusted it to the Society of African Missions (SMA). Fr Francesco Borghero SMA (from Italy) was appointed Interim Superior of the Vicariate. With Fathers Francisco Fernandez (Spanish) and Louis Edde (French), Father Borghero set sail from Toulon on January 5, 1861. Only Fathers Borghero and Fernandez arrived at the port of Ouidah on April 18, 1861 to begin the evangelization of Benin. The late Archbishop of Cotonou, Mgr Isidoro de Souza, who worked so hard to establish democracy and peace in the country, wanted to provide his diocese with a center of pilgrimage and Ma...
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OUR LADY OF TEARS

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Day 337: April 14 Our Lady of Tears, Albino, Bergamo, Italy Around the year 1651 a boy lived in the village of Parre in the Seriana Valley: Paolo Bigoni of Gherardo. Being from a very poor family, at the age of only 10 he was placed as a family with a shepherd in Val Gandino. While he was leading the sheep to pasture, it happened that one day he happened to be an innocent and unnoticed spectator of a horrendous crime. Some brigands attacked a poor traveler at gunpoint, robbed him of what he had and then abandoned him on the road covered with wounds as a result of which he died. The scoundrels were about to flee but when they realized that the boy Paolo at a certain distance had witnessed that cowardly murder, fearing that sooner or later he would have to denounce them to the authorities, or to his family, they attacked Paolo and not at all moved by his tears and invocations, they cut his tongue up to the jaws, making him completely mute. The unhappy boy wandered around the villages of ...
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IMMACULATE QUEEN OF VICTORIES

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Day 336: April 13 Immaculate Queen of Victories, Liveri di Nola, Naples, Italy The sanctuary of Our Lady at Parete is dedicated to the Immaculate Queen of Victories and owes its origins to the apparitions of the Mother of God to a young shepherdess from Liveri named Autilia Scala. These apparitions, handed down by a venerable and indisputable tradition, are proven by the following inscription that was once read here:  D.O.M. DEIPARAE VIRGINI CUIUS OLIM IMAGO SUB TERRA SEPTA VEPRIBUS AUTILIA SCALA DIVINO MONTI INDICANTE, MIRACULIS LATE CLARUIT ET A PARETE, IN QUO PICTA EST NOMEN HABUIT ANNO AB EILSDEM VIRGINIS PARTU MDXIV PIDIE IDUS APRILIS.  It means,  "To the Virgin Mother of God, whose image, once covered with thorns, was unearthed following a divine revelation made to Autilia Scala, shone widely with miracles and took the name of the wall on which it is painted, on April 12 in the year of the Christian Era 1514." According to what is handed down, Autilia Scala, daughte...
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OUR LADY OF THE REVELATION

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Day 335: April 12 Our Lady of the Revelation, Tre Fontane, Rome, Italy Bruno Cornacchiola was born in Rome on May 9, 1913. His family, poor materially, was even more squalid in spiritual values. His mother, harassed by work outside home, could not even dedicate herself to their education. His father, almost always drunk, often beat him, so much so that at a certain moment he decided not to go home in the evening and spent the night in some cave on the outskirts of Rome or in the premises near the Scala Santa (Holy Steps). As Bruno himself recounts:  “I was traveling by train and I don’t usually pay for the train ticket, I hid under the coach seats when the conductor passed by and if the opportunity arose, I would steal also, I only worried about being taken by the police …” At 23 he married with Iolanda Lo Gatto. However, he did not want to receive the Sacrament of Matrimony and only to satisfy his future wife complied to celebrate it in the sacristy (of a church). During the civil...
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OUR LADY OF GRACE

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Day 334: April 11 Our Lady of Grace of Mellea di Farigliano, Cuneo, Italy A century after the first Apparition, on April 10, 1637, Our Lady appeared a second time to a young man, shortly thereafter the construction of the Sanctuary and Don Bosco was invited to found a school there. The event that brought significance to the small village of Mellea, located on the state road that connects Carrù to Farigliano, in the province of Cuneo, took place on May 20, 1537. Mellea is a common name that can be found in other nearby places and that instinctively recalls honey; perhaps it means a place rich in plants with an intense scent and rich in nectar for bees, such as acacias, limes, cherry trees. Mellea lies right in the middle of the green of these plants, on one of the terraces formed in this place by the Tanaro river. A certain Antonio da Momigliano, in the province of Chambéry, resident in Farigliano, very ill and so crippled that he was forced to walk on all fours, with the help of his ha...
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OUR LADY OF THE VIRGINS

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Day 333: April 10 Our Lady of the Virgins, Macerata, Italy Since 1355, there has been a small church in this place with the title of  Our Lady of Virgins (Santa Maria dei Vergini). In 1547, having been abandoned and left to fall into ruin for almost sixty years, its custodians, the Friars of the Fountain, decided to demolish it and rebuild another. On April 3, 1547, they obtained the consent of the Municipality, on the condition that a large chapel for the celebration of Holy Mass was left intact. In this chapel, in 1533, Lorenzo Pittori painted the fresco of the Madonna delle Vergini . On April 10, 1548, Easter Tuesday, in this chapel, Our Lady appeared to a little girl, a certain Bernardina di Bonino, asking that, every Saturday, young girls would carry out processions of penance and fasting in reparation for the sins of the city.  Our Lady asked her to inform the citizens that, on Saturday, a procession of girls was to go here, in reparation for the many scandals that reign...
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OUR LADY OF SORROWS

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Day 332: April 09 Our Lady of Sorrows of Chauchina, Chauchina, Granada, Spain Rosaria Granados Martin was a simple woman born in Chauchina on April 25, 1839. On April 4, 1859 she married Manuel de Cantos Romero, but she was widowed very early and with three children to support: Jose, Diego and Francesco, whom she tried to educate in a Christian way by setting a good example through prayer and works of Christian charity. One of her sons was killed by a man in a tavern in the village of Granada where Rosaria and her children lived as caretakers of a farmhouse or farmhouse. God's Mercy put the poor widow to the test by making the murderer seek refuge in her own home. When the woman learned from another of her sons what happened, she, although feeling torn by pain, did not feel like betraying the man by bringing him to justice and simply told him:  "See what you did... but nothing will bring me back my son ... I forgive you ... even the Virgin forgave the executioners of her Son o...
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