A highlight of Bishop Shane’s time in Italy was a visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, the patron saint of our Diocese.
Although busy at the Synod in Rome, he navigated a day to visit the shrine in Genazzano, a small town in the Alban Hills with with Sr Kylie Fowler and a Brother from her community.
We can trace the choice of our diocesan patron saint back to the first bishop of Sandhurst, Bishop Martin Crane OSA, who brought the faith traditions of his Augustinian Order to the newly formed Diocese of Sandhurst, including a special devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel.
The Augustinians have long venerated Our Lady of Good Counsel as a wise and loving guide, a protector and intercessor for their community. Their connection was made even more profound with a miraculous event at Genazzano in a church they have administered for over 650 years.
This church, Santa Maria del Buon Consigli (Saint Mary of Good Counsel) was built by the people of Genazzano in the fifth century, who were already Marian devotees. It was later entrusted to the Augustinians in 1356.
Some one hundred years later, the church had fallen into dire need of repair. An Augustinian tertiary and widow, Petruccia de Nocera, who had received visions of the arrival of the Blessed Virgin in her dreams, spent almost her entire wealth repairing the church so it would be fit for the arrival of Our Lady. Petruccia’s work in restoring the church was thwarted by an eventual lack of funds and Canonical Law at the time, which forbade acting on an uncorroborated supernatural vision.
Petruccia’s vision manifested in 1467. The people of Genazzano were celebrating the feast of St Mark outside the dilapidated Church when they heard beautiful music and, looking up, saw a fresco of the Madonna and Child miraculously appear from a luminous cloud and remain suspended in the air.
The fresco, believed to have originated from ‘Our Lady of Good Offices’, a church in Scutari, Albania, is said to have ‘fled’ the imminent invasion of the Turkish (and Islamic) Sultan Mehmed II, on the death of the Albanian (and Christian) Prince Scanderbeg. It is said that Our Lady also appeared to two Albanians who told them she would leave Scutari before Albania lost its Christian faith, and they saw her being whisked out to sea in a white cloud .
Today the fresco has been renamed Our Lady of Good Counsel and has been enshrined in the now well-maintained and well-visited Santa Maria del Buon Consigli.
The fresco remains on a wafer-thin layer of plaster which would be impossible to remove let alone transport without flaking. The image itself is said to have a transformational quality – sometimes illuminated in a rose colour, sometimes benevolent, sometimes sad – depending on the eyes of the beholder.
The Church in Genazzano has become a pilgrimage site and there are said to have been many subsequent miracles.
The icon of Our Lady of Good Counsel is symbolic of the continuity of faith and the enduring relevance of ancient traditions in our modern world.
Our Lady of Good Counsel remains a beacon of hope and wisdom in times of challenge and change – a fitting patron saint for our Diocese.
