FFC SAINTS AND MARY
SERAPHIM HOME . YOUTH . CATECHISM . MASS . SAINTS
MHII.220210
American Catholic >>Saint
of the Day
A B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Conversion of Bl. Bartolo
Longo
Fr. Daniels
“With the boldness of desperation I lifted my face and
hands to the Heavenly Virgin and cried, "If it be true that you promised
St. Dominic that whoever spreads the Rosary will be saved, I will be saved,
because I will not leave Pompeii until I have spread your Rosary. “ (Bl. Bartolo Longo)
Witchcraft and the occult have been drawing curious
and spiritually-starved people for millennia. Unfortunately, this phenomenon
has not died out; rather, it is increasing its hold on society. The following
true story took place 100 years ago, but it is being repeated today in the
lives of many, the young in particular. May the life of Blessed Bartolo Longo be an encouragement to anyone who finds
himself caught in the web of superstition or occult practices, and to families
and friends of such persons. Mary's Rosary is the powerful
liberating force they seek.
Bartolo's Background
Bartolo
Longo was born of an upper class family in Laziano,
Italy, in 1841. He was an irrepressibly lively and mischievous child. In 1858,
his family faced a familiar parental dilemma - where safely to continue their
spirited teenager's education. Warned against the University of Naples - “Here
is the devil and the times threaten catastrophe” - he was sent to a private
school near home. Then, as today, college was the occasion for partying,
romance, and fascination with everything new. Italy was in upheaval; the
Kingdom of Naples was crumbling before a revolution. Eager to see his future
amidst these radical social and political changes, Bartolo,
like other students, consulted a medium. Whether serious or not, this was his
first, but not his last, contact with the occult.
Losing His Faith
In 1863, Bartolo arrived in
Naples to study law. Garibaldi's victorious revolutionaries had, by then,
completely transformed the university there. Where Saint Thomas Aquinas once
studied theology, theology was now abolished, replaced by courses in the
“history of Christianity” that taught the misdeeds and fanatical ignorance of
the Church, the clergy, and Christians. He was plunged into anti-Catholic
demonstrations, parades against religious “superstition”, and public lectures
against religion. Hegelian philosophy reigned supreme over all disciplines. The
new Italy could not live side by side with the old Catholicism and the Pope in
Rome. Dissenting priests and monks flooded into Naples, some to become
professors, proclaiming a new-style democratic church, a new creed, and a
liberated code of conscience some seeking this new “church's” sanction to
marry.
Bartolo
was swept headlong into the effervescence of rebellion.
“Overwhelmed as I was in the ebullience of my youth,
in the errors against the faith and against the true Church, as shown in the
celebrated University of Naples, ensnared on the enticing hook of freedom of
conscience and thought, seduced by the novelties of science, feeling secure in
the reverberations of certain professors’ names echoing as far as the
universities of Paris and of Berlin, discordant, it is true, among themselves
in their opinions but all in agreement in denying the person of God, the
Catholic Church, the religious orders, the Pope, the sacraments and the rest of
truth which is part of faith, I too grew to hate monks, priests and the Pope,
and in particular the Dominicans, the most formidable, furious opposers of those great modern professors, proclaimed by
the university the sons of progress, the defenders of science, the champions of
every sort of freedom.”
Eventually the excitement and pleasures of his
new-found freedom left Bartolo empty; the Hegelians
could not, in fact, give him the answers he was searching for; the destruction
of true religion left him with no certain truth about life. Naples, how ever,
offered another resource for youthful seekers.
A Priest of Satan
In 1864, the 23-year-old law student began to
regularly visit the infamous mediums of Naples, whose revelations from the
world beyond often made headlines. Thirsting after the supernatural, he was
initiated into secret doctrines and anointed a priest of the occult. He came to
the ceremony of his “consecration” skin and bones from fasting and with
strained nerves, producing chronic illnesses that would persist throughout his
life. His very appearance took on the demonic, a mephistophelean beard and the burning eyes of one
possessed. Garbed in a black robe, he entered a darkened, draped room decorated
with human skulls. There he recited occult formulas and promised to be a
missionary of esoteric and anti-Catholic doctrines. After being anointed with
holy oils, likely stolen from some church, Bartolo
gave proof of his new faith by falling into a trance, during which Confucius
and others spoke through him to the satanic assembly.
Though he managed to achieve his law degree, Bartolo henceforth was living in an unreal world of demons,
obsessively seeking from them directions for everything he did. The demonic
spirit - his “angel” - to whom Bartolo submitted his
entire life, gave him dazzling visions and revelations. It denounced Christ and
His Church, making the future Blessed ferociously
anticlerical and blasphemous. Bartolo's health and sanity
were rapidly declining under this spirit's influence.
Conversion
But the faith was not dead in Naples. God had His own
messengers. The first was a learned man and a solid Catholic, Professor Vincenzo Pepe. Disgusted at the
state in which he found Bartolo, he warned the young
man that he was headed for the “madhouse”, that his “revelations” were all
lies. The truth did not immediately end Bartolo's
babblings about visions. On 29th May, 1865, Professor Pepe
finally convinced Bartolo to go to confession to a
Dominican friar and scholar, Fr. Alberto Radente. For
a full month, Fr. Radente listened, guided and
enlightened Bartolo regarding his errors, each day
delaying absolution while gradually exorcising the young man's mind. On the
Feast of the Sacred Heart, 23rd June, 1865, Bartolo,
newly absolved, received Holy Communion. In need of constant vigilance due to
his weakened physical and spiritual condition, he moved in with Professor Pepe and for a period of time the two were together
constantly. He was befriended by other faithful and dedicated Catholics. One
was Caterina Volpicelli, a
beautiful young woman his own age, who prayed intensely for the poor sinner.
(She was declared Blessed in April of 2001.) For a period, he became the
companion of Naples' “Mother Teresa”, a Franciscan friar, Father Ludovico da Casorja.
Every day for two years, he worked in the Hospital of Incurables. There he
discovered two severely ill patients who were deeply in love with God. They
revealed to him “perfect happiness”: joyful acceptance of life's miseries out
of love for Christ.
On the Feast of the Holy Rosary, 7th October, 1871,
Father Radente received Bartolo
into the Third Order of St. Dominic as Brother Rosario. Bartolo
made his last visit to a séance, holding up the Rosary and crying out, “I
renounce spiritualism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood.”
Mission to the Ignorant and
Superstitious
Bartolo
was a good attorney, but felt that God had a special religious mission for him.
In 1872, he happened to be on a business trip. “I set out for the Valley of
Pompeii without any apostolic design; I travelled there only to renew rental contracts, that is all. I thought I was arriving in
the role of a lawyer but was instead, through the plans of God, setting out as
a missionary. I was still a blind man and a youth, and Providence took me by
the hand, as one would guide the blind and children.”
Only poor, illiterate and backward people lived in the
district of Pompeii. Lacking any law enforcement, the countryside was a
robbers' den. About 2,000 people lived in the parish, but less than 100, mostly
older women, ever went to the one church, which was in ruins and rat-infested.
The priest, an ignorant man himself, rarely administered a Sacrament.
Bartolo,
so recently redeemed from the errors of Satanism, was overwhelmed with pity for
the people.
“I was shocked at
the degree to which these people had been abandoned. They were ignorant of the
simplest prayers and the most rudimentary ideas of catechism …Their religion was a mixture of superstition and popular tradition, rather
than a real and true cult of God. For their every need, even the basest, they
would go to a witch, a sorceress, in order to obtain charms and witchcraft.”
His interviews with them rendered answers such as
this:
“Do you know the
Christian teachings, the catechism?”
“Yes,
sir.”
“Then tell me, how
many Gods are there?”
“When I was a
child, I remember their telling me there were three. Now, after so many years,
I don 't know if one of them is dead or one has
married”
Bartolo
knew the people were not to blame for their ignorance. He prayed in anguish for
them, recalling his own past idolatry. One day he remembered Father Radente's exhortation:
“If you are looking for
salvation, propagate the Rosary. It is the promise of Mary. He who propagates
the Rosary shall be saved.”
“I prostrated myself and my eyes filled with tears.
Queen of the heavens, to thee I shall listen ... I shall not depart from this
earth without first displaying before thee the triumph of your Rosary.”
The Miraculous Madonna on a Cart of Manure
To establish a chapter of the Confraternity of the
Holy Rosary in Pompeii at a mission in 1875, Bartolo
needed an image of Our Lady of the Rosary. He rushed by train to Naples and
made a futile search in the shops. Providentially, he met his friend, Father Radente, who told him he had once bought such an image and
left it at a convent in the city. Bartolo could go
there and see it and, if he liked it, it was his. Bartolo
hurried to the convent to ask about it.
“Dear me! I
felt a tightening around my heart as soon as I set eyes on it! Not only was it
an old and worn canvas; the face of the Madonna, more than that of a kind,
holy, gracious virgin, seemed rather the face of a coarse and unrefined woman
... her entire cloak was chipped and worn by time with holes left by moths ...
I was left speechless by the ugliness of the other figures. St. Dominic on the
right seemed an idiot more than a saint; and on the left there was St. Rose,
with a huge face, coarse and unrefined, crowned with roses ... I hesitated with
indecision whether I should leave it there or take it away even in this state.
The thought that the mission was coming to a close weighed me down; I had
promised the picture of the Rosary to the three missionaries and to the people
that very evening.”
Take it he did, but it was too large to carry on the
train as baggage. Bartolo remembered that a man from
Pompeii had come to Naples that same day to load his wagon with manure. Finding
the parishioner, Bartolo arranged the Madonna on the
cart and rushed off to catch the train to greet her at Pompeii. When the
painting was unloaded from on top of the manure, it did indeed inspire horror,
but was quickly touched up by a travelling artist. In 1879, the painting was
beautifully restored, giving the Virgin a gentler and more refined face and
changing St. Rose into St. Catherine. It became famous as the miraculous Virgin
of Pompeii and can be seen there today.
The Virgin of the Rosary
By spreading devotion to the Rosary, Bartolo believed he could bring the people of Pompeii to
the knowledge and love of their faith. Little by little he taught some to pray
the Rosary, and gave each family an image of the Virgin of the Rosary along
with Rosary beads. He arranged Marian festivals and processions; in the
evenings he taught catechism. He also busied himself with restoring dignity to
the little church by building a new altar. His Bishop, however, insisted that
he raise the funds to build a new church instead, a church which would become a
temple and one of the greatest Marian shrines in the world.
Whatever Bartolo undertook
eventually exploded into a storm of grace.
“Then, all of a sudden, the supernatural took us by
surprise and overtook us. We thought we were the founders of the work of
Pompeii; we became the first spectators amazed at this great work ... We had
planned a rustic church for poor peasants whose main ornament was to be the
brightness of its painting; after barely a few years, as quick as a flash, we
saw rising before our eyes a sanctuary, a monument of faith and a glory of art.
We had only asked for a few pennies, a mere few pennies; instead, thousands of
lire began arriving, thousands dizzyingly becoming millions. What’s more, we
wanted to issue some publications promoting the works; instead, we succeeded in
founding a magazine, without doubt the most widely-read in Italy; now the news
of the miracles reaches even the remotest of peoples. We wanted only to provide
for the religious life of poor peasants; we succeeded instead in producing a
truly universal movement of faith, a Catholic movement, Catholic just as the
Church is.”
Another Fight Against
Superstition - Eugenics
Around the magnificent Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii,
Bl. Bartolo built a complex of charity. He
established schools for poor boys and girls, nurseries for the children of
impoverished families, an orphanage for girls, and a print shop and bindery
where the young people could work to produce his magazines. Finally, he longed
to found an orphanage for the sons of prisoners, children who were so often
left to themselves and abandoned. So he began begging once more and laid the
first stone of the orphanage in 1892. Within five years, it was caring for over
100 orphaned boys.
This project provided the opportunity for Bl. Bartolo to fight yet another war against superstition: the
pseudo-science of eugenics. Its advocates studied the configurations of skulls,
the sizes of brains, and the forms of noses and ears, drawing false conclusions
about the nature of the human person. This was a foretaste of 20th century
eugenics. One of their conclusions was that the children of criminals were
doomed themselves to become criminals. It was, they asserted, in the children's
genes, and no amount of training or education could change this reality. Not
only was it hopeless to help them, but gathering them into one institution was
dangerous and antisocial.
The orphanage for boys went against this “scientific”
authority. Bl. Bartolo was urged to study their books
to see the folly of his good works. He did and he undid the inhuman principles
of the so-called anthropological science by the example of his boys, sons of
the most desperate criminals, boys with physical characteristics that marked
them as criminal types, yet the boys were well-educated, morally upright and
well-behaved.
“Today this shelter, which upon its birth was greeted
as a mere utopian idea, has been granted the support of the most worthy
criminologists, penalists and scientists of Italy and
of other countries as well, and with the facts as proof it has solemnly
affirmed that the sons of prisoners can be educated. Today one hundred
prisoners' sons are living in this home. One hundred and three have already
been sent away as well-educated boys or have been taken in by honest and secure
families. We have received good reports concerning all of them. They are
scattered about in workshops, in the clergy, in the army, in the royal navy, in
military bands; and many of them have even crossed the ocean to the distant
shores of America where, in New York, they do honour
to us, forming a true Valley of Pompeii colony.”
The Triumph of the Rosary
Thus the man who once listened to demonic spirits (and
even became their priest) began his great work to bring souls back into the
arms of the Church through Mary and her Rosary. Until his death at 85 in 1926,
Bl. Bartolo worked untiringly in this apostolic
venture. He built up one of the world's greatest Marian shrines and many
institutions of charity. His life was not without conflict and struggle; he
endured a difficult marriage, was dealt harsh criticism, and even had his work
suppressed for a time, but what God accomplished through his humble service
remains today as a monument of his devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary, a place
of international pilgrimages. His dying words were, “My only desire is to see
Mary, who has saved me and who will save me from the clutches of Satan.” He was
beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980.
>>Saint
of the Day >>More Saints of the
Day
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>FFC >Youth >Catechism
>Mass >Saints and Mary