08th May - OUR MOTHER OF POMPEII

 In the autumn of 1872, Bartolo Longo arrived at the plain of Pompeii to take care of the affairs of Countess Marianna Farnararo De Fusco. 

    In that fertile agricultural region infested with robbers he also began to spread the Rosary among the sharecroppers of De Fusco and the farmers of the place. 

    With his wife's help, he inaugurated a confraternity of the Rosary and he had need of a picture of the Blessed Virgin before which the Rosary could be recited every day. 

    He obtained one as a gift from a religious of the Monastery of the Rosary at Porta Medina. It portrayed Our Mother of the Rosary, with St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena. 

    Arriving at Naples on November 13, 1875, the picture was provisionally exposed in a small declining Chapel. But in that same month, Bartolo Longo received permission from the 

    Bishop of Nola to build a new Church. Miracles were reported and pilgrimages began to frequent the place. In 1979, John Paul II went on pilgrimage to Pompeii and gazed out from 

    the very balcony from which Bartolo Longo had "seen gazing out" the white figure of the representative of Christ to bless the people calling for universal Peace.




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