Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 341: April 18 Our Lady of Good Health, Monteortone, Padua, Italy On the Euganean Hills, on the outskirts of Abano Terme, there is a famous Marian shrine, which for over five centuries, following an apparition of the Virgin, is a place of convergence of the Christian faith of the neighboring Venetian-Euganean peoples: it is the sanctuary of the Madonna della Salute (Our Lady of Good Health) of Monteortone. It is an artistic monument of faith, which consecrates to the Mother of God this very fortunate stretch of Venetian land, miraculously visited and miraculously blessed by Mary’s maternal assistance. After many battles and following serious injuries that made the articulation of his lower limbs difficult, Pietro Falco went to Monteortone (Padua) on the advice of friends and doctors to search for healing or, at least, some relief from the injuries. He was a God-fearing man and had experienced the special protection, during his actions in warfare, by miraculously escaping death many ...

Day 340: April 17 Our Lady of the Miracles in Corbetta, Milan, Italy This sensational news could be considered the result of pure fantasy, if it did not have the support of historical data. The three boys who played in the square were: Cesare dello Stampino, Antonio della Torre and his brother Giovanni Angelo, ten years old, deaf and dumb from birth, familiarly called Navello. On the façade of the church of St Nicolas there was a beautiful image of Our Lady, seated on a throne, with the Child Jesus in her lap. That day, as every day, three boys were playing on the square in front, when suddenly a cry was heard, in an articulate voice: The Child! Our Lady! It interrupted the game and attracted everyone's attention. It was Giovanni himself who first noticed that the Child Jesus had come down to the square to play with them. His wonder flowed into a scream of joy and at the same time he regained the use of speech. The Child Jesus, having left the painting, had taken to the square, obs...

Day 339: April 16 Our Lady of Consolation, Paternopoli, Avellino, Italy The parish church of St Nicolas of Bari of 1522, preserves, inside, in the chapel dedicated to Santa Maria della Consolazione (Our Lady of Consolation), a much venerated painting by F. Fiorentino, which represents Mary seated on the throne of glory with Jesus in her arms, an angel holding the canopy, while, at the feet, there is St Augustine and his mother St Monica. In the sacristy there are numerous sculptures and wooden reliquaries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The devotion to Mary in Paternopoli is very ancient. There are documents that date back to 1142 the devotion to Mary officiated by the monks of Montevergine in a small church. The resumption of the Marian devotion dates back to 1751, originating from a miraculous event which was followed by others. On April 16, 1751, among the carpenters who worked in the parish church of St Nicolas of Bari, in which a canvas depicting Our Lady was kept in...

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...

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 ...

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...