Pope marks 1500 years of veneration of ancient Marian image

By Francesca Merlo

July 17th2024 marks the 1500th anniversary of the veneration of the image of Santa Maria in Portico – Portus Securitatis of Romeor protector of the Eternal City.

“This happy circumstance,” the Pope wrote in a letter to Father Antonio Piccolo, Rector General of the Order of Clerics Regular of the Mother of God, “is for me a joyful occasion to unite myself in prayer to your religious Family, to whom the care has been entrusted since 1601.”

The cult of Santa Maria in Portico

Pope Francis then relates that devotion to Santa Maria in Portico began with a miraculous apparition of the Mother of God on July 17, 524, in the house of Santa Galla, a Roman noblewoman. Pope St. John I witnessed it, transforming the Portico into a Marian shrine and a hospice of charity.

“This is an invitation to you, spiritual heirs of Saint Leonardo, to care for and promote the practice of welcoming the poor and the marginalized, so that the places we inhabit and the churches themselves can be a portico open to the world, offering consolation and assistance to the many forms of poverty that characterize our lives,” the Pope said.

A revelation in difficult times

He added that the Blessed Virgin revealed herself in a particularly difficult moment for the Church, “spreading her mantle over Pope John I, who would suffer and die for peace without renouncing his faith, becoming hostage to political conspiracies and fratricidal wars.”

In the current context, the Pope asks, “how can we not understand the urgency of promoting peace, of praying for peace?”

Pope Francis recalls that the example of fraternal life must be “evangelically attractive for the faithful to whom you offer pastoral service” and thus exhorts the Order of Clerics Regular of the Mother of God “to look to Mary as a sign of consolation and sure hope, the maternal face of God and a refuge in which to seek refuge.”

The evangelizing work of Saint Leonard

Concluding his letter, Pope Francis emphasizes that the Jubilee celebrations that the Order is preparing to experience, under the gaze of the Virgin of the Portico, “recall the evangelizing work of Saint Giovanni Leonardi”, who also wrote the first Constitutions of the Urban College of Propaganda Fide, to form priests capable of meeting the missionary challenges of the time.

“For this reason,” the Pope concluded, “I encourage you to take care also of the integral formation of religious, in a path of progressive conformation to the Crucified and Risen One, first fruits of redeemed humanity and, looking to Mary, disciple of Christ and Mother of the Church, may your apostolate be a channel of grace and an instrument for the joyful proclamation of the Gospel.”