Beneath Mary’s Mantle: Bl. Bartolo Longo (1841-1926)
St. Dominic once had a dream in which he saw all the saints of the Order safely beneath the mantle of Mary, Protectress of the Order of Preachers. In this blog series, we’ll introduce our beloved Dominican Saints, learn about their lives and work, and come to see how they still inspire and pass on their gifts to today’s faithful.
Born: February 10, 1841 in Naples, Italy
Died: October 5, 1926 in Pompeii, Italy
Feast Day: October 5
Bartolo Longo was born in 1841 in Naples, Italy, a time and place where Catholicism was increasingly under attack by Italian nationalists. Intellectual circles at the time were especially anti-Catholic; instead, many turned to spiritualism and the occult. This was the environment into which Bartolo was plunged when he went to the University of Naples to study civil law. Unfortunately, although he had been raised in a Catholic family, Bartolo fell heavily under the influence of his anti-religious environment, and he abandoned the faith. Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and Bartolo turned to Satanism in an effort to fulfill his spiritual needs. Gradually his life began a downward spiral: his mental health suffered from depression, paranoia, and anxiety, while his physical health was impacted by the extreme fasting he took on as part of his occult practices. It finally took the influence of a close friend to pull him out of this lifestyle. This friend introduced Bartolo to a Dominican friar, who gradually led Bartolo to renounce his Satanist ways and come back to the Church. Bartolo returned to the sacraments and completely changed his ways, surrounding himself with Catholics, performing works of mercy, and becoming a Third Order Dominican.
In 1872, Bartolo (now a lawyer in Naples) traveled to Pompeii on business for an extended trip. The physical and spiritual desolation struck him deeply. The locals were either indifferent about religion or caught in the same entanglements of spiritualism that he had struggled with so intensely himself. Still wrestling with guilt over his past, affected by the desolation of the valley of Pompeii, Bartolo found himself starting to despair—when suddenly, a voice in his head reminded him of the words of the Dominican friar who had brought him back to the faith. “If you seek salvation, promulgate the Rosary. This is Mary’s own promise.” Immediately, Bartolo fell on his knees—he saw clearly that this was the path God wanted him to take to atone for his past sins and win souls to Christ.
In addition to Bl. Bartolo’s efforts to promote the rosary, he supported a multitude of charitable works, including caring for orphans and children of prisoners
Promoting the Rosary became Bartolo’s singular mission. It was a difficult uphill battle in the bleak spiritual atmosphere of Pompeii, but this time Bartolo did not despair. He planned festivals and raffles to catch people’s attention, taught catechism classes, founded a Rosary Confraternity, and began fundraising to build a church. The latter task was especially laborious but eventually bore fruit with the church of Our Lady of Pompeii, a Latin basilica which soon became a place of pilgrimage and had to be expanded in the 1930s to accommodate its visitors. In 2008, then Pope Benedict XVI presented the basilica with a Golden Rose – a papal token of reverence that was first awarded in 1096.
It is easy to draw parallels between Bartolo Longo’s world and our own: persistent anti-religious ideals pervade important sectors of our society, many people are not only indifferent, but hostile to the Faith, and occultism continues to make itself felt in popular and political circles. It is easy, too, to despair of all this and want to give up the fight. We may see the sometimes-bleak landscape and struggle to imagine that we can make any difference to it at all. What we learn from Bartolo, though, is that we are never alone, that Christ and His Mother long for the conversion of these souls even more than we do, and if we turn to them through the gift of the Rosary by a real and living faith, we will see the wonderful fruits of that Divine Love.
Blessed Bartolo Longo, pray for us!
