Our Lady of Perpetual Help: “Make her known throughout the world!”

Almost forgotten by everyone, but not by Brother Agostino Orsetti, who had been a friar at the Church of Saint Matthew. In his heart, fervor had not diminished; in his mind, the memory of the countless miracles obtained through the intercession of this incomparable Mother of all who are in need had not faded. Around 1850, already advanced in years and nearly blind, he befriended a young altar boy named Michele Marchi, who frequented the chapel of Santa Maria in Posterula.
Many years later, when he was already a Redemptorist priest, the former altar boy recalled that the good friar used to speak of the sad state in which the much-loved image found itself.

“Do not forget, my son, that I am watching her very closely” (Father Michele Marchi, C.Ss.R.)

referring to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, who was in our chapel. “She was very miraculous. Do not forget, do you understand”?. Brother Agostino died in 1853 without having seen fulfilled his wish that the Virgin of Perpetual Help be once again exposed for public veneration. At first sight, the efforts and trusting prayers of this zealous Augustinian seemed fruitless.

“Make her known throughout the world”!

Only in appearance, however, because the young altar boy, later Father Michele Marchi, C.Ss.R., did not forget! In the mid-nineteenth century, the Congregation of the Redemptorist Fathers was invited by Blessed Pius IX to establish its General House in Rome. To this end, and with no knowledge of the facts related above, they bought a plot of land on the Via Merulana, right on the spot where the Church of Saint Matthew had once stood.
As will be seen, the one who, through the voice of the Pope, drew this Congregation to the Eternal City was the Mother of Perpetual Help. There the Redemptorist Fathers built a convent and the Church of Saint Alphonsus. One of them, while studying the part of the city in which they had settled, soon discovered that the Church of Saint Alphonsus had been built on the very site of the former Church of Saint Matthew, where the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help had been venerated for centuries. He then reported this auspicious discovery to his Redemptorist confreres. Among the priests who heard him was Father Michele Marchi.
He, in turn, then told him everything that the old Augustinian friar of the convent of Santa Maria in Posterula had told him about the image. Here we can clearly see the hand of the Blessed Virgin guiding events, awakening in the hearts of those missionary sons of hers the ardent desire to expose the miraculous image once again for public veneration. They urged the Superior General of the Congregation, Father Nicola Mauron, to make a request directly to the Pope to that end. Received in audience by Pius IX, the Superior General told him the history of the icon and presented the request that he entrust it to the custody of his Congregation, so that it might once again receive the honors and petitions of the faithful in the very place chosen by Our Lady in 1499. The Pope listened attentively and granted everything. Later, the Holy Father gave the Redemptorists, in the person of their Superior General, the mission of spreading devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help: “Make her known throughout the world”!
In January 1866, Fathers Michele Marchi and Ernesto Bresciani went to Santa Maria in Posterula to receive the icon from the Augustinians. The Augustinian Fathers, acceding with filial respect to the wish of the Supreme Pontiff, handed the miraculous image over to its new custodians. In a solemn procession, some 20,000 faithful carried it through flower-decked streets to the Church of Saint Alphonsus.

“Dear Mother, heal my son or take him to heaven”!

During the procession, the Mother of Perpetual Help interceded generously, working several miracles. The most famous was the petition of a mother who said, “Dear Mother, heal my son or take him to heaven”! An anguished mother pleaded from the window of her house, lifting her dying son in her arms as the icon passed by. The child recovered immediately. A little farther on, another mother asked that her daughter, who suffered from total paralysis, be healed. Immediately the child regained strength in her legs, but only enough to walk. The next day, mother and daughter went to the Church of Saint Alphonsus and implored: “O Mary, finish what you have begun”! The girl left completely healed.

The Restoration of the Icon

The icon had to be cleaned and restored. The task was entrusted to the Polish artist Leopold Nowotny. Finally, on April 26, 1866, the image was once again presented for public veneration in the Church of Saint Alphonsus on the Via Merulana. Thus began a new phase in the luminous history of the miraculous icon of the Blessed Virgin. To this day it welcomes her sons and daughters with maternal care in the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Thanks to the zeal of the Redemptorist Fathers, thousands of other churches have been built in her honor throughout the world.
In 1990, the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was removed from the high altar to meet a request for new photographs of the icon. It was then that its state of serious deterioration was discovered: both the wood and the paint had suffered badly from environmental changes and from clumsy attempts at restoration.
The General Government of the Redemptorists decided to contact the technical services of the Vatican Museums to carry out a general restoration of the icon that would resolve the problem of cracks and fungi, which threatened damage that could no longer be repaired. The first part of the restoration consisted of a series of X-rays, infrared images, qualitative and quantitative analyses of the paint, and other infrared and ultraviolet tests. The results of these analyses, and above all a carbon-14 test, indicated that the wood of the Perpetual Help icon could readily be dated to the years 1325–1480. The second phase of the restoration consisted of the physical work of retouching the affected areas and reinforcing the structure that supported the icon. This physical intervention was limited to what was strictly necessary because, as with surgical operations on the human body, any restoration work always causes some trauma. Artistic analysis places the pigmentation of the painting at a more recent date (after the seventeenth century): this would explain why the icon offers a synthesis of Eastern and Western elements, especially in the appearance of the faces.

In 1991, Saint John Paul II said:

“One hundred twenty-five years have passed since that April 26, 1866, when Pope Pius IX entrusted to your Institute the spreading of the cult of the Virgin of Perpetual Help. Since then you have not ceased to guard with love this Byzantine icon, which came from the East and has become a point of reference for the faithful who come to pray in this church. As I wrote in my Apostolic Letter Duodecimum saeculum (1987), ‘the faithful of today, like those of yesterday, must be helped in prayer and in the spiritual life by the sight of works that seek to express the mystery without hiding it’ (Saint John Paul II, Duodecimum saeculum, 11), the mystery of the divine motherhood, and at the same time, while inviting trust, it exalts the role that the Virgin plays in the life of every believer. Mary is the mother of hope and of goodness. Mother of mercy and grace. ‘God, wishing to redeem all mankind, placed the whole value of the redemption in the hands of Mary, so that she might dispense it as she wills’. (Saint Alphonsus M. Liguori, Opere ascetiche, Rome, 109).
In this icon Mary dispenses this value to us with the joyful announcement that the New Covenant has been fully realized in her and through her is offered to all people: the firstfruits of the redemption and the witness to the extraordinary path of the cooperation of the Mother of the Lord in the salvation of humanity. The eyes of the Virgin look upon people and radiate upon them the gift of divine grace.” (Saint John Paul II).