Pope Leo XIV, on his first outing from the Vatican, went to pray at the sanctuary of the Madonna del Buon Consiglio in Genazzano. Confirming the personal and historical bond with Mary, invoked as a Good Counselor
by Don Gabriele Cantaluppi
LThe image of the Mother of Good Counsel of Genazzano is a fresco from the fifteenth century, with the features of the Byzantine Madonnas of Tenderness. Mary is depicted while, with an affectionate gesture, she bows her head towards her Son, who lovingly embraces her, encircling her neck with his right hand and grasping the neckline of her dress with the other.
Their faces touch and reveal infinite sweetness, while Jesus, whom the prophet Isaiah calls “a wonderful counselor”, dressed in a red robe, seems to suggest silent advice to the Virgin Mother.
But the title "Mother of Good Counsel", with which the Mother of Jesus is honored, refers to the fact that she too is the bearer of a counsel of salvation, expressed in the words addressed to the servants at the wedding at Cana: "Do whatever Jesus tells you" (Jn 2:5). These words of hers contain the true "good counsel" and Mary continually addresses them to those who wish to have her as a counselor and guide in life.
A very well-known popular tradition claims that on April 25, 1467, at the hour of vespers, that image of the Madonna appeared in Genazzano, a charming town about fifty kilometers from Rome in a south-east direction, and that it rested on a wall of the church of the Augustinian fathers. Two Albanian pilgrims later recognized in the image the features of the one venerated in the church of the Holy Annunciation (Kisha mbas kalase) in Scutari in Albania; in a miraculous way it would have torn itself from its original place, which would soon have fallen into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, risking desecration. For this reason, even today a deep devotion animates the numerous Albanian pilgrimages to Genazzano and the faithful repeat the incessant prayer: "Come back, come back, oh pious Mother, come back soon to Albania", especially on April 25, the day on which the feast of the "Venuta" is still celebrated today.
On the site where the current basilica stands, there has been a small church since the 11th century, entrusted to the Augustinian friars, present in a small convent outside the walls of the village. In the second half of the 15th century, a widow named Petruccia, an Augustinian tertiary, made all her possessions available to rebuild the old church, now dilapidated.
Of the original building only a few fragments remain incorporated into later structures. The ancient church was enlarged and decorated during the pontificate of Martin V Colonna, originally from Genazzano, whose pontificate lasted from 1417 to 1431. What remained of the medieval church, the convent and the sacred building of the fifteenth century were then incorporated into a new large sacred building with three naves, built almost from the foundations between 1621 and 1629, and a soaring bell tower was also erected. The only element that never underwent any modification is the wall on which the holy image of the Madonna is located, and the proposal, advanced several times, to place it on the high altar of the church was always discarded, believing that the effigy should remain in the place that she herself had chosen. Only a marble aedicule, which can still be admired today, was placed to protect it.
The community of Augustinian Fathers has always animated the activity of the sanctuary, transmitting the spirituality of Saint Augustine, taking care of the liturgy, preaching to the people and the prayer practices offered to pilgrims. It is not surprising then that, on the afternoon of May 10th, just two days after his election, Pope Leo XIV unexpectedly showed up to visit the sanctuary, to entrust his ministry and the entire Church to the Mother of Good Counsel. As he himself had already recalled after appearing for the first time at the Loggia of Blessings in St. Peter's Square, he belongs to the Augustinian Order.
In his first homily to the cardinals he had motivated the choice of the name Leo first of all by referring to the figure of Leo XIII, author of the encyclical rerum Novarum, in which he had offered the Church the first solemn document on the Social Question. But in a private conversation with Cardinal Ladislav Német he also referred to the ties of Leo XIII with the Augustinians, because several times during his long pontificate he had raised the Order from crises caused by undue interference from political power. Leo XIII's confessor, the Augustinian Guglielmo Pifferi, had also advised the Pope to insert the invocation into the Litany of Loreto Mother good counsel, which had occurred in 1903, shortly before the death of the pontiff. Furthermore, Leo XIII had canonized, in the jubilee year 1900, perhaps the best-known Augustinian saint, Saint Rita of Cascia.
The Pope also recalled his previous visit to the Shrine of the Mother of Good Counsel after his election as Prior General of the Order in 2001, as well as his 1999 role as Prior Provincial of the Augustinian Province of the “Mother of Good Counsel” in Chicago. Finally, on 25 April 2024, he celebrated Holy Mass in the Shrine on the occasion of the feast of the “Coming” and in his homily he urged the faithful to draw inspiration from Mary to spread peace and reconciliation in the world.