The Founder

Bartolo Longo was born in Latiano (BR) on February 10, 1841. In 1863 he came to Naples to finish his studies in Jurisprudence. Here, after some years, he approached the world of spiritism, abandoning at all Catholic faith in which he had been educated. Thanks to Professor Vincenzo Pepe and to the Dominican Father Alberto Radente, he returned to the straight path. His conversion was total and he thrown himself wholeheartedly to religion and charity. Thanks to the noblewoman Caterina Volpicelli, which was beatified on April 29th, 2001, he knew Countess Marianna Farnararo, the widow of Count De Fusco, who had five children. It was just to administrate her properties that he arrived at Valley of Pompeii, in 1872. Walking along the local countryside, he felt even greater that doubt which had been tormenting his soul for a long time: how could he be saved, because of the very little edifying experiences of his past life? It was midday and while hearing the bells’ ring he felt inside a voice: “If you spread the Rosary, you will be saved!”. So, he understood his vocation and proposed not to leave Valley of Pompeii without having spread there the cult to the Virgin of the Rosary. He began catechizing the peasants; he restored, then, the small parish church of the Holy Saviour, which dated back to the year 1000 and decided, as suggested of the Bishop of Nola, to erect a new church dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. On November 13th, 1875, the prodigious image of the Virgin of the Rosary arrived at Pompeii. From Naples first and then from the whole world, a lot of offerings began arriving for the construction of the new church, whose foundation stone was laid on May 8th, 1876. In 1877 Longo wrote and spread the pious practice of “The Fifteen Saturdays”; two years later he was cured from a grave illness thanks to the prayer of the Novena of Impetration composed by himself and of which nine hundred editions were published in 22 languages. On October 14th, 1883, almost 20,000 pilgrims gathered in Pompeii, recited, for the first time the Petition to the Virgin of the Rosary, sprung from the heart of Bartolo Longo to support the Encyclical Supremi Apostolatus Officio (September 1st, 1883), by which Leon XIII pointed out as a remedy against the evils of society the prayer of the Rosary. In 1884 he founded the periodical Il Rosario e la Nuova Pompei. Meanwhile, thanks to him, around the building yard of the new church a real city was rising with the houses for the workers, first example of social building which announced the Rerum Novarum, the telegraph, the railway, a small hospital, the meteorological and seismographical observatory. In 1887 he founded the Female Orphanage, the first of his Works of Charity in favour of minors. Some years later, Cardinal Raffaele Monaco La Valletta consecrated the new Temple. The Shrine of Pompeii was being more and more known and all kind of faithful asked for the most disparate favours. To the Advocate also turned some prisoners to exhort him to take care of their children. It was in this period that our Blessed matured his most original intuition, that is: to believe not only in the possibility of the rehabilitation of the prisoners’ children, but also to bet on the fact that they, in their turn, could save their parents from despair. In 1892 was laid the foundation stone of the Hospice for the prisoners’ sons run, beginning from 1907, by the Brothers of the Christians Schools of Saint John Baptist de La Salle. Hardly six years later, the pupils were more than one hundred. The first boy welcomed, a Calabrian, became, later, a priest. Successively, he housed also the prisoners’ daughters whom he entrusted to the cares of the Dominican Sisters “Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii”, founded by him in 1897. On May 5th, 1901 the façade of the Basilica was inaugurated, built with the contribution of faithful from all over the world and dedicated to Universal Peace. Bartolo Longo died at the age of eighty-five, on October 5th, 1926. Two years later, thanks to the good offices of Brother Adriano Di Maria of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who continued the work of the Advocate, Pompeii was recognized as an independent municipality. The work of Bartolo Longo had its solemn recognition by the beatification proclaimed by the Holy Father John Paul II, on October 26th, 1980.