April 12, 1947 – April 12, 2022: 75o Anniversary of the apparition
Rome, April 12, 1947: it is a spring day.
Bruno Cornacchiola (1913-2001), a 34-year-old Roman streetcar conductor, together with his children Isola, aged 10, Carlo, aged 7, and Gianfranco, aged 4, misses the train to Lido di Ostia and decides to head along the Via Laurentina to Tre Fontane, a place famous for the martyrdom of Saint Paul. Bruno looks for a quiet place to prepare the speech he is to give the following day on the subject: “Mary is not always Virgin and Immaculate.” He became a bitter enemy of the Catholic Church during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), when a German Lutheran soldier convinced him to embrace Protestantism. Blinded by hatred, he bought a dagger in Toledo to kill the Pope. After returning home, he pressures his wife Iolanda to follow him into Protestantism. She agrees after trying to dissuade him by asking, as a last resort, that she observe the Nine First Fridays to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
That day Bruno sits beneath a eucalyptus tree, leafs through the Bible, and begins taking notes while his children play ball in the clearing, where a dark, foul-smelling grotto carved into the tuff can be seen.
He is writing when his children’s voices interrupt him: “Dad, the ball is lost!” He begins searching for it, but his children fall to their knees one after another in front of the dark grotto and, with their hands clasped, repeat: “Beautiful Lady, Beautiful Lady…” Bruno cannot get them to move and cries out in fear: “God, save us!”
At that exclamation, a veil falls from his eyes, and he too sees the Beautiful Lady, standing barefoot on a block of tuff. She has a loving but sorrowful gaze; her black hair is covered by a long mantle the color of meadow grass in spring; her spotless white dress is cinched at the waist with a pink sash. She speaks to Bruno in a gentle voice and introduces herself: “I am the Virgin of Revelation. You persecute me; now it is enough. Enter the Holy Fold [= the Catholic Church]… The Nine First Fridays of the Sacred Heart that you observed, lovingly encouraged by your faithful wife, before embarking on the path of error, have saved you!” The heavenly conversation lasts about an hour and contains a message to be personally delivered to the Pope.
From this encounter comes a wonderful story of conversion and grace that, even today, 75 years after these events, first and foremost reminds us that the Virgin is a Mother who never tires of calling her children back: no distance frightens her! She loves us, waits for us, seeks us out, calls us… She wants us to be saved!
