OUR LADY OF MOUNT BERICO

Day 299: March 07

Our Lady of Mount Berico, Vicenza, Italy



In the first decades of the 1400's a plague claimed victims in the Vicenza area. Towards the middle of March 1426 an elderly woman, a certain Vincenza Pasini, went to the Bishop of Vicenza to tell him that, a few days earlier, on March 7, while she was going to her husband, who was working in his small vineyard on Monte Berico, in the place where the Sanctuary stands today, a beautiful woman had appeared to her and said to her: "Don't worry, Vincenza. I am Mary, the Mother of Christ who died on the Cross for the salvation of the human race. Go and tell the people of Vicenza to build a church consecrated to my name in this place, if they want to be freed from the scourge of the plague that strikes them..."

The Bishop did not believe her; just as the Magistrates of the City, to whom Vincenza had also turned, did not believe her. Yet, to provide proof that Our Lady had made her request seriously, the Seer explained that she had traced with an olive branch the perimeter of the Church to be built in her honor, ensuring that those who went there on the first Sunday of the month would receive abundant graces.

Only two years later, on August 1, 1428, Vincenza had a second vision; and this time she went down to the city, crying out in a loud voice what had happened to her. The people who in the meantime continued to die from the plague began to believe her: so it was that, on the 25th of that month, the authorities and the people decided to begin the construction of a primitive church, the original nucleus of what, with subsequent expansions, would become the most beautiful and important Marian Sanctuary in the Veneto: the "Madonna di Monte Berico."

The Basilica-Sanctuary is now made up of two churches: one in Gothic style, completed in the second half of the 1400's; the other in Baroque style, enlarged and completed by Borella (1688-1703), after an initial expansion designed by Palladio (1576). The High Altar – with the venerated image of the Madonna [a statue carved in marble in 1430 and polychromed] that protects under her mantle the various humanity that turns to her – is a work completed only in 1928. From the City of Vicenza you can access Monte Berico through a series of porticoes [built in the second half of the 1700's], formed by 150 arches: as many as the beads of the 'old' Rosario; and, every ten arches, by a Chapel in which the individual Mysteries of the Rosary are painted. Officiated since time immemorial by the 'Servants of Mary', the Sanctuary of the "Madonna di Monte Berico" is an uninterrupted destination for pilgrimages from all over the Triveneto and other regions of Italy.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"In Every moment of your life the splendor of every virtue increases with a burning love; the fullness of every grace, in the gift of Divine Union; the honor of supreme eminence, in the glory of being the Mother of Jesus and everyone."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 159)

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