OUR LADY OF THE STAR

Day 146: October 05

Our Lady of the Star, Montefalco, Perugia, Italy



Towards the end of 1861 and until the beginning of 1862 the Virgin appeared to Federico (Righetto) Cionchi (1857-1932) in the ruins of the ancient church of St Bartholomew. The temple was of modest size, with traces of a Marian fresco dating back to 1520.

Over the years, the chapel had been gradually neglected. Around 1815 the roof of the church collapsed: from that year it was left in complete abandonment. The chapel became a pile of ruins covered with brambles and brushwood; the apse remained almost intact, with the image of the Madonna and the Child Jesus, around which ivy had formed a green frame. As early as 1859, rumors of alleged apparitions or melodious songs, seen or heard around the ruined chapel, had begun to circulate. In 1860 a pious woman, St Bonifazi, who died shortly afterwards because she was very ill, repeated that the Madonna wanted to be honored in the small church, which therefore had to be restored.

Righetto, a child of almost 5 years, son of poor peasants who lived not far from the place, wandering one day around the chapel, heard himself called by name. He instinctively entered the chapel and saw that there was a very beautiful Lady, dressed in red; He approached her and she took him by the right hand, caressing him. Among the many things she said to him, the seer remembers only this tender warning: "Righetto, be good".

His little sister Rosa, who was present there, saw nothing. The child's mother, who was made aware of the fact, did not pay attention to it at first. Righetto, however, almost daily, went to "see the Madonna". The neighbor noticed this, who learned from the child's mother his confidences. The news of the visions spread immediately and was linked to the statements of Saint Bonifazi. Opinions were divided and rumors were born. But in March 1862 the first of a long series of miracles that accredited the seer's story took place: Giovanni Castellani, a young man with constipation who struggled with death, was healed as soon as he set foot in the church. The church was rebuilt and inaugurated in 1881.

The Sanctuary "Madonna della Stella" is located in the green of Umbria, in the center of the Spoleto plain. On the place where it stands, there was a small church dedicated to St Bartholomew the Apostle, almost completely ruined. Only the apse was still in good condition, and there was a fresco depicting the Madonna seated on a small throne with the Child Jesus on her knees. The painting, which is now placed above the main altar of the Sanctuary, dates back to 1520 and is the work of Paolo Bontulli from Percanestro (Camerino MC).

The beginning of the Marian apparitions on the site of the current Sanctuary seems to be fixed in the autumn of 1861, although the date is much debated by historians, some of whom would like them to begin between February and March 1862. It is certain, however, that the first "publicly evident" manifestation of the supernatural took place in March 1862, with the first miracle, while, from the testimonies of the little seer, Righetto Cionchi, it can be deduced that the Madonna had already begun to be seen a few months earlier.

Monsignor Giovanni Battista Arnaldi, then Archbishop of Spoleto (1853-1867), who followed the events that took place around the church of St Bartholomew and who gave the first news to the public, in the first report on the subject states: "for some months the Virgin had already manifested herself."


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"As the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, is inseparable from the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God, so too the soul chosen by the Trinity to be the spouse of God must be inseparably and realistically united to Mary."

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, New Jersey, 1997, p. 371)

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