Perpetual Help Becomes the Mother of the Redemptorists-- and the World
-
December 12, 2022Today, December 11, we commemorate Pope Pius IX entrusting the miraculous image of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorists (The Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer) in 1865.
When the Reverend Father Mauron, C.Ss.R., Rector Major, became aware of the existence of the miraculous Image of Our Lady, he then presented himself to the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX. Father Mauron briefly told the Pope the story of the holy icon and submitted humble requests to him to make it available for public veneration in the church of St. Alphonsus di Liguori in Rome.
The Pontiff was moved by listening to Fr. Mauron's story concerning the icon. Immediately the Holy Father drafted his own decree ordering that the Venerable Image, hidden in Santa Maria in Posterula, be removed from the Esquiline and placed in the church of St. Alphonsus, which is located between the two great Basilicas of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major in Rome.
It is possible that our holy Founder St. Alphonsus venerated the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in the sanctuary of San Matteo. St. Alphonsus in fact, stayed in Rome in 1762, when he was appointed the bishop of Santa Agata dei Goti; and for seven weeks, he lived in a house in the Esquiline quarter.
What is only partially probable for St. Alphonsus becomes almost a certainty regarding St. Clement Maria Hofbauer. The illustrious Germanic propagator of the Congregation, in fact, did his novitiate at San Giuliano in Rome. The novitiate house was a few steps away from the sanctuary containing Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
A sweet thought that makes us contemplate St. Alphonsus and St. Clement at the feet of the Virgin who was to become, a century later, the patroness of the Redemptorist Congregation.
