Blessed Bartolo Longo, founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii, was born in 1841, the son of a doctor. He came from a good home and was an easy-going, friendly young man, but that dramatically changed when he attended college.

At the age of twenty-two, Bartolo left his home at Latiano in Brindisi, to attend the University of Naples to study law. During his studies, he joined a sect and was ordained as a priest of Satan. He publicly ridiculed Christianity and did all in his power to undermine Catholic influences. Soon thereafter, Bartolo Longo began to have doubts about Satan, who failed to lead him to the truth. He sought the help of his Catholic friends, Vincenzo Pepe and Father Alberto Radente, OP, who had a strong devotion to Our Lady and to the Holy Rosary. The Dominican priest exorcised Bartolo Longo and later baptized him. When Bartolo Longo was baptized, he chose the name Maria as his baptismal name and as his middle name. He viewed Mary as a ‘Refuge of Sinners’ and credited his miraculous conversion to her. She was the ‘Refuge’ who would lead him to Christ.

Following his conversion, Bartolo Longo desired to do penance for his former, sinful life and to serve the Church he had so viciously slandered. He made a promise to work for the poor and needy.

Providence brought Bartolo Longo to the little town of Pompeii, just south of Naples, in 1872 where the widowed Countess Marianna De Fusco, asked him to manage her property. When he witnessed the human and religious poverty of the peasants of the area, Bartolo agonized over how he could help them better their lives.

One evening, as he walked near the dilapidated chapel at Pompeii, he wrote:

As I pondered over my condition, I experienced a deep sense of despair and almost committed suicide. Then I heard an echo in my ear of the voice of Friar Alberto repeating the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “If you seek salvation, promulgate the Rosary. This is Mary’s own promise.” These words illumined my soul. I went on my knees. “If it is true … I will not leave this valley until I have propagated your Rosary.”

Bartolo then persuaded people of the area to help him clean out the broken-down church. Then he invited the people to join him one evening to pray the Rosary.

Bartolo Long organized a confraternity of the Rosary. He needed a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the recitation of the Rosary.  In 1875, he obtained as a gift a painting portraying Our Lady of the Rosary, with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine of Siena. Sister M. Concetta de Litala of the Monastery of the Rosary at Porta Medina had been holding it for the Dominican priest Alberto Radente. Radente had acquired it from a junk-shop dealer in Naples for a very small sum. The painting was in bad condition and Longo wrote of his immediate distaste of the poor artistic quality when he first saw it. However, he accepted the gift to conserve funds and to not insult Sister Concetta. Longo raised funds to restore the image and placed it in the church in an effort to encourage pilgrimages. The picture was initially exposed in the small chapel, but within the month, Bartolo Longo received permission from the Bishop of Nola to build a new church.

Miracles began occurring and many pilgrimages took place there. During the time when the pilgrimage church was being built, Bartolo Maria Longo began to perform several works of charity. He and his wife founded an orphanage for girls. The first children he took in were fifteen small orphans, one for each decade of the rosary. He also established a hospice for boys, sons of prisoners, and a corresponding hospice for girls. He founded the Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii, a religious women’s institute to care for the shrine and the educational houses attached to it. He also established the Dominican Tertiaries near the shrine.

A special devotion known as the Supplication to the Queen of Victories was begun on October 1883 and is now recited all over the world, especially on May 8 and on the first Sunday in October. The devotion includes a request thought to have been given by Our Lady to one of the children healed at Pompeii, “Whoever desires favors of me should make three novenas of petition and three of thanksgiving.”

On October 26, 1980, Bartolo Longo was beatified by Pope John Paul II and is referred to as the “man of the Madonna,” and the “Apostle of the Rosary.”

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