The Shrine of Santa Maria del Fonte in Caravaggio, Italy
As would later happen at Lourdes, a spring of water rose up out of the ground, in which many people were healed of various infirmities; a hospice and church were erected on the site very shortly thereafter. In 1575, St Charles Borromeo began a new and far grander church, according to a design by the architect Pellegrino Tebaldi, but the project was only completed in the early decades of the 18th century; the site of the apparition is now directly behind the high altar. It is now the second most visited Marian shrine in Italy after the Holy House of Loreto; here are some recent pictures from our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi. (By the way, the painter Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan in 1571 to a couple from Caravaggio, and used the name of their native place as his nom de plume to distinguish himself from the other, more famous Michelangelo.)
The church is set at the center of a wide piazza, and surrounded by symmetrical tree-lined porticos on all four sides. The fountain of water runs through a corridor underneath the church (photos below), then passes out into this area on the side of the building, and is collected in a large pool surrounded by a marble balustrade.
The brief of Pope St Pius X by which the shrine was elevated to the rank of a minor basilica in 1906.
The apparition took place just over 20 years before the fall of Constantinople, when much of Europe was occupied with the question of healing the Great Schism and organizing a crusade to rescue the Byzantine Empire from the imminent Turkish conquest. An undocumented tradition has it that Giannetta went to Constantinople and appeared before the Emperor John VIII to plead with him to heed the Virgin Mary, and treat for reunion with the Church of Rome.
Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan at the time of the apparition (from 1412 until his death in 1447.)
Francesco Foscari, the contemporary Doge of Venice, and the longest reigning in the history of the Republic, (34½ years, from 1423-57.)
Caravaggio is situated within the diocese of Cremona; in December of 1590, Niccolò Card. Sfondrati, the bishop of Cremona, was elected Pope, taking the name Gregory XIV. He was in poor health at the time of his election, and he died after a reign of just over 10 months.
In the corridor are also displayed two relics of miracles of the Virgin Mary. In 1520, the head of group of thieves who had been condemned to death, but was sincerely repentant of his crimes, was to be beheaded on this block, which broke at the moment the executioner swung the axe, sparing him the death blow.
Source: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/07/the-shrine-of-santa-maria-del-fonte-in.html
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