Domenico Bartolini’s painting “Madonna of the Miracle” was on the
stage in Paul VI Audience Hall during Pope Francis’s general audience of
December 28.According to L’Osservatore Romano, the painting will also be displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica as Pope Francis celebrates Vespers on December 31 and Mass on January 1.
The painting, normally located in the Basilica of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, commemorates the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne (1814-84) in that church in January 1842.
Ratisbonne, a Jew who was engaged to be married, converted to Catholicism, became a Jesuit priest, and founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion.
Father Francesco Trebisonda, Sant’Andrea delle Fratte’s parish priest, told the Vatican newspaper that the painting’s appearance in St. Peter’s Basilica “is a solemn way to begin the celebration of the Marian year for the 175 years since the apparition of the Immaculate.”
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