From the Website of Vatican
links https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-12/christmas-jubilee-our-lady-hope-liturgies-saint-peters.html
Our Lady of Hope to accompany Christmas liturgies in St. Peter’s Basilica
As
the Jubilee of Hope concludes with the Christmas Season, an image of
Our Lady of Hope from southern Italy will accompany the faithful
attending liturgies celebrated by Pope Leo XIV.
The image hails from the parish of Saint Mark the Evangelist in San Marco of Castellabate, in the southern Italian province of Salerno.
Our Lady of Hope’s image arrives in the Vatican on Monday, December 22, and will be placed near the Altar of the Confession. The image returns to her home parish after January 6, the Epiphany of the Lord.
Our Lady of Hope
Our Lady of Hope is depicted holding the Christ Child in her arms and, in her right hand, a golden anchor firmly planted in the ground.
The image recalls one housed in the Shrine of Saint Mary of Hope in Battipaglia, also in the province of Salerno, which was brought to the Vatican for the opening of the Jubilee in 2024.
The image of Our Lady of Hope was made by the Stuflesser Workshop in 1954 to commemorate the Marian Year proclaimed by Pope Pius XII.
After completion, families in the San Marco of Castellabate area welcomed her into their homes before she was placed in the church.
Our Lady of Hope was recently restored for the Jubilee and set back in her place at the beginning of the Holy Year.
Madonna loved by summer visitors
The
wooden image, which stands 1.45 metres tall, enjoys deep devotion among
the 1,300 local residents, as well as the many tourists who fill the
hamlet of San Marco during the summer.
The feast of the Blessed
Virgin Mary of Hope is celebrated on the last Sunday of August and is
the only Marian feast dedicated to Our Lady of Hope in the Diocese of
Vallo della Lucania.
During the triduum in her honor, a
procession first carries an image[ Audio Embed Listen to our report] of
Mary painted on a nineteenth-century canvas—the work that inspired the
wooden image made in the 1950s. The image is then taken as far as the
port, where local fishermen recite a prayer entrusting themselves to
Mary.
From the heart of the “periphery”
Our
Lady of Hope comes from the “periphery,” from the area between the
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park. It is a region affected by
depopulation, where even basic services are not always guaranteed.
One
year ago, Fr. Pasquale Gargione—then parish priest of Saint Mark the
Evangelist, a church now led by Fr. Francesco Giordano—proposed bringing
Our Lady of Hope to the Vatican, as a way of casting light on the
reality of many inland Italian communities.
In these places, solitude is keenly felt, the population is aging, and inequalities are widening.
The
Blessed Virgin Mary carries these burdens of hardship, as Our Lady of
Hope stands as an icon of hope for the “little ones,” who find comfort
and love in her maternal protection.
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