The Jubilee Year for the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Blessed Bartolo Longo in Pompeii is celebrated from 1 October 2022 to 31 October 2023 under the slogan ‘If you seek salvation, propagate the Rosary’. Fathers Alfonso Amarante and Serafino Fiore are present at the Shrine with their contribution this March.
Bartolo Longo was in the Arpaia locality when he heard a voice whispering to him, as he recounted: ‘If you seek salvation, propagate the Rosary. It is Mary’s promise. Whoever propagates the Rosary is saved!”.
Some might think that Longo’s first arrival was only of value to believers. Indeed, prayer, in particular, the Rosary prayer is essential. Still, the blessed man arrived in this land and transformed it also under the social, economic, and civil aspects.
Few farmers lived here, whose existence was made precarious and difficult by the raids of brigands and malaria. Around the sanctuary, whose first stone was laid in 1876, a real City began to develop: the institutes for orphans and prisoners’ children, the post and telegraph office, Via Sacra, the workers’ houses, the railway station, the public fountain. He was indeed a man of Our Lady, an apostle of the Rosary, but he also had an unquestionable social and civil role.
“One of the important appointments of this Jubilee Year will be on Friday, 17 March, when the Redemptorist Missionaries will be in Pompeii to celebrate the Longhiano Jubilee Year.
At 4 p.m., in the Marianna De Fusco Hall, Father Alfonso Amarante, President of the Pontifical Alphonsian Academy, will give a talk on ‘The Sacrament of Reconciliation today in the footsteps of St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’.
It will be a valuable opportunity for priests called to administer the sacrament of penance and pastoral workers dealing with moral issues.
On the same day, at 6 p.m., the Holy Rosary will be recited in the Basilica. At 7 p.m., Father Serafino Fiore, Provincial Superior of the Redemptorists of Naples Province, will preside at Holy Mass at the High Altar.”
Pompeii Shrine, 1 March 2023
