Walk with Mary throughout the Year

Day 354: May 02 Our Lady of the Cross, Pietranico, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy On March 25, 1613, the day of the Annunciation, a farmer named Domenico del Biondo was crossing the transversal district of Pietranico on his way to inspect his crops, when a woman in a starry white dress appeared to him. Sh e asked for the restoration of a shrine, then disappeared. This was the Queen of Heaven, according to an inscription on the oratory built there in 1618. In March 1675 a predatory horde of military deserters sacked the city. When they threatened to return that spring, the citizens prayed to Our Lady of the Cross, and on May 2 she declared that the city had been spared. Pietranico celebrates Our Lady of the Cross on May 3rd, previously it was the Catholic feast of the Holy Cross, which was probably the patronal feast of the Quarter of the Cross before the apparition. The night before, on May 2, people light hundreds of bonfires in and around the city, so that the entire area appears to be on f...

Day 353: May 01 Our Lady of the Assumption, Lonigo, Venice, Italy In 1486 three shoemakers lived in Verona: Guglielmo, Gianantonio and Giampietro. They came from Novara and had found work in the veronese city, in via della Beverara.  Giampietro had managed to set aside 50 ducats, a considerable sum for those times. Envious and greedy, the other two friends agreed to invite him to the Lonigo market, with the secret intent of killing and robbing him. They left on April 30 (as historian Bertani says, but others report on April 29). In those times of violence, even the artisans went about carrying arms with them: Gianantonio armed himself with a double-edged knife ( pistolese ), Guglielmo with a sword and Giampietro with a dagger. They spent the night in Lonigo and on Monday morning they went to the market where they bought, among other things, white cloth. After lunch they were already on the way back. Just a few kilometers away from the town, near the church of St Peter in Lamentese,...

Day 352: April 30 Our Lady of Capocolonna, Crotone, Calabria, Italy On Capo Lacinio – or delle Colonne - stood a pagan temple dedicated to the Mother Goddess, Hera Lacinia, a nd reliable sources speak of a pilgrimage at that time, in spring, to celebrate "fertility" or "life". When "the fullness of time" (Gal. 4:4) came, with Christianity, venetation shifted to the "Mother of the Lord and of the Church", to Mary. Symbolically, it can be said that the collapse of the many pillars of that ancient temple and the permanence of "only one" of them is like an indication of the collapse of the many pagan divinities and the remaining, of "Mary", the only "Pillar" of the world who brought Christ, "the cornerstone of history" (I Pet 2:6). An ancient tradition has it that the Icon was brought to Crotone by St Dionysius himself, the convert from St Paul, remaining there as the first Bishop; and according to this traditi...

Day 351: April 29 Our Lady of the Kind's Blood, Vigezzo Valley, Verbania, Italy An hour before sunset a certain Giovanni Zucono (later nicknamed "Zuccone") together with his friend Comolo played the "piodella" on the square in front of the village church, dedicated to St Maurizio. The game consisted of placing a coin for each player on a wooden or stone compass (the "magician"). Conversely, whoever by hitting the "magician" with the piodella (a round stone splinter) "managed to scatter the coins around making those closest to the "piodella" his own, won. The Zuccone, already known for his furious character, was a loser that evening, "we don't know how much money, but enough to unleash in him the anger and irrationality that hides in each of us when we feel persecuted by bad luck." He took it out on the quiet image of Our Lady that was there a few steps under the portico of the church, painted on the façade, to the...

Day 350: April 28 Our Lady of the Chestnut, Bergamo, Italy The only account of the Apparition to which the historians of the Sanctuary drew until recently is the one that the notary Gerolamo Ceres Oli transcribed and, transcribing, summarized from an ancient "writing" about 1646, at the time of the dispute between Ossanesga and Fontana. Another recent document attesting to this apparition comes from a letter addressed to King Lodovico, a document dating back to April 1511. Tradition summarizes the account of the apparition as follows:  In the chestnut wood where the Sanctuary stands today, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to two men, probably father and son, intent on picking the leaf. Our Lady asked the two visionaries to tell all the population of the nearby villages about the exceptional event and to report that the Most Holy Mother of God expressly asked that a church be built in that isolated place in her honor. To give strength to her message and to dispel any doubt of ...

Day 349: April 27 Our Lady of Montserrat, Catalan region of Bages, Barcelona, Spain Our Lady of Montserrat, known as La Moreneta, refers to the wooden image depicting the Mother of Christ, carved by St Luke in Jerusalem, then it was entrusted to St Peter who in his long journey left it in Barcelona and following the Muslim invasion for security reasons it would have been taken to the mountain of Montserrat where it remained hidden in the Holy Cova until the year 880. It is also said that in this year, on a Saturday afternoon, some children who were looking after a flock saw a strong light descend from the sky accompanied by a melody. This was repeated several times. They looked for the place struck by the light, they found in a cave the statue of Our Lady that they called the Black Virgin, "La MORENETA." When the bishop heard of the discovery, he tried to have the small statue transported to Manresa, but it was not possible because the statue became too heavy. The bishop inte...