OUR LADY OF THE CROSS

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. She 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 fire as the statue of Our Lady from the 1600's parades through it. On May 3, the statue goes in procession from the parish church to the rural oratory.

The church of Pietranico at first glance looks like a simple country building used for worship. To the visitor who crosses the threshold of the Oratory for the first time, there is such a rich interior, that he could certainly never have imagined it was hidden behind that simple façade just described. Inside, you can admire stuccoes and gilding, friezes and decorations, fake marbles, canvases, paintings.

Considering the architectural heritage, the strucchi, the frescoes and the canvases enclosed in the church, it can be said that Our Lady of the Cross (Santa Maria della Croce) is a jewel of art as well as one of the very few examples of primary Baroque in the entire Region. According to Vincenzo Balzano, an illustrious scholar and writer of art from Abruzzo, it is a small masterpiece of the 1600's, which together with Our Lady of Grace of Alanno, contains "the most perfect Italian Baroque in terms of architecture, painting, decoration and carvings." This is a very flattering judgment, shared by other illustrious scholars during the twentieth century who have extensively reported on it.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"O Most Holy Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Divine Vocations! We contemplate and venerate you, in the glory of the privileges, of the dignity, of the missions with which the Most Holy Trinity has adorned you and only you, O Most Holy Mary, through every habitual and actual grace, you became a marvelous star of glory for the Most Holy Trinity."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 233)

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