At 10.00, Pope Leo XIV went to the Chapel of Saint Bartolo Longo for the veneration of the relics of the Saint Founder of the Sanctuary and the greeting to the Bishops present.
The Pope then proceeded to the Chapel of the Reconciliation, where he greeted the priests of the Sanctuary.
Afterwards, the Pontiff went to the Sacristy, where he put on his liturgical vestments.
At 10.30, the Pope arrived in Piazza Bartolo Longo for the Eucharistic Celebration. After the Supplication to Our Lady of Pompeii, the Holy Father received thanks from Archbishop Tommaso Caputo, Prelate of Pompeii and Pontifical Delegate for the Sanctuary.
At the end of the Eucharistic Celebration, after removing his vestments, the Holy Father greeted the staff of the Pontifical Delegation.
The following is the homily delivered by Pope Leo XIV after the proclamation of the Gospel:
Homily of the Holy Father
Dear brothers and sisters!
“My soul magnifies the Lord.” These words, with which we responded to the First Reading, spring from the heart of the Virgin Mary as she presents to Elizabeth the fruit of her womb, Jesus, the Saviour. After her, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and the elderly Simeon will sing in praise of Christ. These three canticles mark the Church’s daily praise in the Liturgy of the Hours. They are the gaze of ancient Israel, which sees its promises fulfilled; they are the gaze of the Church, the Bride, reaching out to her divine Bridegroom; they are, implicitly, the gaze of all humanity, which finds an answer to its longing for salvation.
One hundred and fifty years ago, by laying the foundation stone of this Shrine, on the site where the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD had buried the signs of a great civilization under ash, preserving them for centuries, Saint Bartolo Longo, together with his wife Countess Marianna Farnararo De Fusco, laid the foundations not only of a temple, but of an entire Marian city. Thus he expressed his awareness of God’s plan, which Saint John Paul II, speaking in this place of grace on 7 October 2003, at the conclusion of the Year of the Rosary, relaunched for the Third Millennium, in the context of the new evangelization: “Today”, he said, “as in the times of ancient Pompeii, it is vital to proclaim Christ to a society that is drifting away from Christian values and even forgetting about them”.
Exactly one year ago, when I was entrusted with the ministry of the Successor of Peter, it was precisely the day of the Supplication to the Virgin, this beautiful day of the Supplication to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii! So, I had to come here, to place my service under the protection of the Holy Virgin. My choice of the name Leo places me in the footsteps of Leo XIII, who, among his other merits, also developed an extensive Magisterium on the Holy Rosary. Added to all this is the recent canonization of Saint Bartolo Longo, apostle of the Rosary. This context provides us with a key to reflecting on the Word of God we have just heard.
The Gospel of the Annunciation introduces us to the moment at which the Word of God is incarnated in Mary’s womb. From this womb radiates the Light that gives full meaning to history and to the world. The greeting that the angel Gabriel addresses to the Virgin is an invitation to rejoice: “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28; cf. Zeph 3:14). Yes, the Hail Mary is an invitation to joy: it tells Mary, and through her all of us, that upon the ruins of our humanity, tested by sin and therefore ever prone to oppression, abuse and war, the caress of God has come, the caress of mercy, which takes on a human face in Jesus. Mary thus becomes the Mother of Mercy. A disciple of the Word and an instrument of His Incarnation, she truly reveals herself to be “full of grace”. Everything in her is grace! By offering her own flesh to the Word, she too becomes, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, following Saint Augustine, “the mother of the members of Christ … having cooperated by charity that faithful might be born into the Church, who are members of that Head” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 53; cf. Saint Augustine, De S. Virginitate, 6). In Mary’s “Let it be to me”, not only Jesus is born, but also the Church, and Mary becomes both the Mother of God – Theotòkos – and Mother of the Church.
What a great mystery! Everything happens in the power of the Holy Spirit, who overshadows Mary and makes her virginal womb fruitful. This moment in history possesses a tenderness and a power that draw the heart and lift it to that contemplative height where the prayer of the Holy Rosary takes root. A prayer which, having arisen and developed progressively during the second millennium, has its roots in the history of salvation, and finds its prelude precisely in the Angel’s greeting to the Virgin. “Hail Mary”! The repetition of this prayer in the Rosary is like an echo of Gabriel’s greeting, an echo that spans the centuries and guides the believer’s gaze to Jesus, seen through the eyes and heart of His Mother. Jesus adored, contemplated, and assimilated in each of His mysteries, so that with Saint Paul we may say: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:19).
Preceded by the proclamation of the Word of God, nestled between the Our Father and the Glory Be, the Hail Mary repeated in the Holy Rosary is an act of love. Is it not characteristic of love to repeat, without tiring: “I love you”? An act of love which, through the beads of the rosary, as is clearly seen in the Marian painting in this Shrine, leads us back to Jesus and brings us to the Eucharist, “the fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (Lumen gentium, 11). Saint Bartolo Longo was convinced of this when he wrote: “The Eucharist is the living Rosary, and all the mysteries are found in the Holy Sacrament in an active and vital form” (The Rosary and New Pompeii, 1914, p. 86). He was right. In the Eucharist, the mysteries of Christ’s life are all found, so to speak, concentrated in the memorial of His sacrifice and in His real presence. The Rosary has a Marian character, but a Christological and Eucharistic heart (cf. Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1). If the Liturgy of the Hours marks the rhythm of the Church’s praise, the Rosary marks the rhythm of our life, continually bringing it back to Jesus and the Eucharist.
Generations of believers have been shaped and sustained by this prayer, which is simple and popular, yet at the same time capable of reaching mystical heights and serving as a treasure-trove of the most essential Christian theology. For what could be more essential than the mysteries of Christ, than His holy Name, spoken with the tenderness of the Virgin Mary? It is in this Name, and in no other, that we can be saved (cf. Acts 4:12). By repeating it in every Hail Mary, we in some way experience the home of Nazareth, almost hearing once more the voices of Mary and Joseph during the long years when Jesus lived with them. We also experience the Upper Room, where the Apostles, together with Mary, awaited the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This is what the first reading pointed out to us. How can we fail to imagine that, in that time between the Ascension and Pentecost, Mary and the Apostles vied with one another in recalling the various moments of Jesus’ life? Not a single detail was to be overlooked! Everything was to be remembered, assimilated, imitated. Thus was born the Church’s contemplative journey, of which, in the likeness of the Liturgical Year, the Rosary offers a synthesis in the daily meditation on the holy Mysteries. The Rosary has rightly been considered a compendium of the Gospel, which Saint John Paul II wished to integrate with the Luminous Mysteries. This dimension was also very much alive in Saint Bartolo Longo, who offered pilgrims profound meditations to save the Holy Rosary from the temptation of mechanical recitation and to ensure it retained the biblical, Christological and contemplative spirit that must characterize it.
Sisters and brothers, if the Rosary is “prayed” and, I dare say, “celebrated” in this way, it is also, as a natural consequence, a wellspring of charity. Charity towards God, charity towards neighbour: two sides of the same coin, as the second reading reminded us, taken from the First Letter of Saint John, concluding with the exhortation: ‘Let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn 3:18). For this reason, Saint Bartolo Longo was an apostle of the Rosary and, at the same time, an apostle of charity. In this Marian city, he took in orphans and the children of prisoners, showing the regenerative strength of love. Here even the smallest and the weakest are welcomed and cared for in the Works of the Sanctuary. The Rosary directs our eyes towards the needs of the world, as the Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae emphasized, proposing in particular two intentions that remain of pressing relevance: the family, which is suffering from the weakening of the marital bond, and peace, threatened by international tensions and by an economy that prioritizes the arms trade over respect for human life.
When Saint John Paull II proclaimed the Year of the Rosary – next year will mark a quarter of a century since then – he wished to place it in a special way under the gaze of Our Lady of Pompeii. Times have not improved since then. The wars still being fought in so many regions of the world call for a renewed commitment, not only economic and political, but also spiritual and religious. Peace is born in the heart. The same Pope, in October 1986, gathered the leaders of the major religions in Assisi, inviting everyone to pray for peace. On several occasions, including recently, both Pope Francis and I have asked the faithful throughout the world to pray for this intention. We cannot resign ourselves to the images of death that the news presents to us every day. From this Shrine, whose façade Saint Bartolo Longo conceived as a monument to peace, we faithfully raise our supplication today. Jesus told us that prayer offered in faith can obtain anything (cf. Mt 21:22). And Saint Bartolo Longo, reflecting on Mary’s faith, describes it as “almighty by grace”. Through her intercession, may the God of peace pour out an overflowing abundance of mercy, touching hearts, soothing grudges and fratricidal hatred, and enlightening those who bear the special responsibilities of governance.
Brothers and sisters, no earthly power will save the world, but only the divine power of love, this divine power of love that Jesus, the Lord, has revealed to us and given us. Let us believe in Him, let us hope in Him, let us follow Him!
