Feast Day of Our Lady of Loreto

What

Feast Day of Our Lady of Loreto

When

12/10/2022

The Virgin Mary was from Nazareth in Galilee. She lived in the home of her parents, Sts. Anne and Joachim. This is the house where she was born. It was the house where the Annunciation took place. After traveling to Bethlehem and giving birth to Jesus there, the Holy Family fled to Egypt. When Jesus was still young, they settled in Nazareth. During Jesus' public ministry, which began after he turned thirty, Mary was often present with him in and around Jerusalem.

After Jesus, from the cross, gave his mother and St. John into the care of one another, tradition holds that they lived in Ephesus, and it is from there that Mary is believed to have been assumed into heaven. The house in Ephesus is believed by some of the faithful to have been found on the outskirts of the town, and you can go there to visit it.

But what happened to Mary's house in Nazareth? That is believed to be in Loreto Italy.

The story goes that after Jesus' Ascension, the apostles converted the home in Nazareth into a chapel, which was discovered in 336 by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine. A basilica was built around the house, and there the records of Christians worshipping there for nearly a thousand years.

During the Crusades in the late 13th century, Jerusalem and the surrounding areas were destroyed, and Our Lady's home was threatened with destruction by the Turks. So four angels picked up the house and moved it from Nazareth to a hill in Loreto, Italy, where it arrived, safe and sound, in 1295. In the sixteenth century a new, grand basilica was built around the small stone house, and pilgrims can visit both today.

While the Magisterium has yet to offer an opinion on the legitimacy of the possible home of Our Lady and St. John in Ephesus, there have been several papal bulls in favor of the shrine in Loreto. The earliest came in 1491, and in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI visited the shrine. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Therese of Lisieux both made pilgrimages to the house. Since 1920, Our Lady of Loreto has been officially the patroness of air travel.

Despite getting the thumbs up from various popes, there is no requirement for Catholics to have a devotion to Our Lady of Loreto or to believe in the miraculous angelic transfer of her house.

At least one pope thought it was more likely that the local story was true, the one that says the house was moved by the members of the Angelo family who on their return from the Crusades dismantled the house and brought it by ship to Loreto as a pile of stones. They then carefully rebuilt the house on a hilltop. The story is not quite as fun, but still pretty amazing. (reference The Catholic All Year Compendium by Kendra Tierney)