Pompey - History of the Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeya
Valle de Pompeya · Nápoles · Italia · 1875
The picture that came on a wagon
In October 1875, Bartolo Longo arrived in the Pompei Valley to promote the Rosary among the peasants. He needed an image for a small chapel and asked for help from Father Alberto Radente, Dominican. The father sent him an old picture of the Rosary that arrived transported on a manure cart. The image was in a bad state and was untouchable.
The restoration and the first miracles
The painting was restored and placed in the chapel. Almost immediately miracles began to be attributed: an epileptic girl was cured, then a young woman, then a young woman. The news spread and in a few years Pompei became an active pilgrimage center.
Bartolo Longo: the founder
Bartolo Longo (1841-1926) was a Neapolitan lawyer who as a young man had fallen into Spiritism and renounced faith. His return to Catholicism was gradual and the Virgin of Pompei was his definitive conversion. Together with her wife, Countess Marion de Fusco, she built the sanctuary, a school for orphans and a social city around the sanctuary. He was beatified by John Paul II in 1980.
The supplica to the Virgin of Pompeia
Bartolo Longo composed in 1883 a prayer called "Apply to the Virgin of the Rosary of Pompei"which is collectively prayed twice a year in the sanctuary: the first Sunday of May and the first Sunday of October. The supplica is recited simultaneously throughout the world by millions of faithful. It is one of the most widespread Marian prayers of contemporary Catholicism.