December 10

Madonna di Loreto, Loreto, Ancona, Marche, Italy

In some parts of Italy, bells ring at 3:00 a.m. on December 10, to rouse believers to celebrate with bonfires and litanies the miraculous transportation of the Holy House of Nazareth to Italian soil on this date in 1294. The shrine at Loreto, near the Adriatic Sea, has been a magnet of devotion for hundreds of years. In the centuries before the apparitions at Lourdes, Loretto shrines were built throughout Europe and its colonies, often with replicas of the Black Madonna or the Holy House -- in which the Virgin is believed to have conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit -- rescued by angels, it is said, after the Muslims took over the Holy Land in 1291. With reference to the flight of the Santa Casa, in 1920 Pope Benedict XV proclaimed Our Lady of Loretto the patron saint of aviators. The beautiful Litany of Loreto, which invokes Mary under many titles, is so called because since the 1500s it has been recited at the shrine every Saturday, the day of the week consecrated to her from the time of Charlemagne. (Information from the shrine's site, www.santuarioloreto.it, and elsewhere; picture from www.zbudapest.com.)