Saint / folklore
Madonna of Pompeii
Background
The Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei is a Catholic cathedral, Marian pontifical shrine, and Pontifical minor basilica commissioned and co-founded by Bartolo Longo and his wife the Countess Mariana di Fusco, located in Pompei, Italy. It is the see of the Territorial Prelature of Pompei.
The shrine at Pompei is surprisingly young. In 1875 the lawyer Bartolo Longo, a former spiritualist who had returned to the Church, brought a battered painting of Our Lady of the Rosary to the malaria-ridden valley below the ruins. He had obtained it cheaply in Naples, and it arrived on a cart used for carrying manure. Miracles were reported almost at once. Within fifteen years Longo and his wife had raised a great basilica around it, and a new town grew up around the basilica.
The Madonna of Pompeii quickly became one of the most popular cults in southern Italy. Twice a year, on 8 May and the first Sunday of October, crowds recite the Supplica, a prayer Longo wrote. Little objects that had touched her image, like the tinsel in Lewis’s story, were treasured as protective relics. Longo was beatified in 1980.
Bartolo Longo · Supplica alla Madonna di Pompei (it)
· Wikipedia ↗ · Search Google ↗In Naples ’44
A soldier gives Lewis a scrap of tinsel torn from her mantle, promising it will render him bulletproof for a year.
Appears in 1 diary entry.
-
September 11 1943HQ moves to a tranquil rural setting, but there's a creeping sense that the Fifth Army is unprepared and undefended.
tinsel from her mantle believed to grant protection/bulletproofing
Use ← → to move between pages