Originally published at National Catholic Register
Even from his hospital bed, Pope Francis wanted to make sure to approve Bartolo Longo’s cause for sainthood.
Pope St. John Paul II called him “The Man of Our Lady” because nobody was promoting the Rosary as fervently in his days. However, it all started out very differently.
“Look, he is from my diocese,” Cardinal Marcello Semeraro said, pulling a large red binder from a bookshelf.
Standing in the narrow hallway, the prefect for the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints opened the binder and read a few words.
“Everything is in here, his whole life,” the prelate noted.
By any measure, that life was extraordinary. Born in 1841 in rural Puglia, in southeastern Italy, Longo studied law in Naples, where he became an ardent Church opponent. Eventually, he was attracted by spiritualism and even practiced Satanism for some time. In this darkest period of his life, sick and depressed, he found faith and a deep devotion for praying the Rosary. He left Naples for nearby Pompeii, where he eventually founded the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary and built an orphanage, caring for the poorest of the poor.
