marian
anniversaries september
September 2
Madonna della Montagna, Polsi di San Luca, Reggio Calabria, Calabria, Italy
The story goes that in 1144, a boy found his calf kneeling before an unusual iron cross, apparently just unearthed. The Madonna appeared, asking for the young herder to spread the news and for a church to be built on the spot, half a mile high in the mountains. In 1560, a chest was found floating in the sea to Bagnara. Taken ashore, it was found to contain a statue of the Madonna, carved of tufa rock. When the chest was placed in a cart, the oxen suddenly took off for the mountain pass, and nothing more was heard of the statue until it turned up in the Aspromonte massif, at the place where a calf had found a cross and the Madonna had requested a church. The sanctuary there became a place of pilgrimage. Every year, people from all over Calabria and Sicily would make the 24-hour trek, enlivened by tarantellas and ballads, along the rugged path to Polsi, where they would greet the Madonna with gunshots on their arrival September 1. As pilgrims still do—though now they can travel by road or train as well—they would spend the night in one of the hostels near the shrine. On September 2, a wooden Madonna is carried in procession. The stone statue is only taken from its place on the main altar every 25 years or in special circumstances. Also known as the Mother of the Good Shepherd, the Madonna of the Mountain was crowned in 1881, 1931, 1981, and 2022, when the pilgrimage resumed after a two-year hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic.Source: Provincia di Reggio Calabria, www.provincia.rc.it
Also celebrated this date:
 | St. Mary, Sydney, Australia. Gothic Catholic Cathedral dedicated, 1928. |
| Notre-Dame de la Serrée, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Côte-d'Or, Burgundy, France. Rebuilt chapel dedicated, 1856. Pilgrimage mid-September. |
| Notre Dame de l'Hermitage, Noirétable, Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. Statue lost during Revolution returned to shrine, 1979. Pilgrimages August 15 & September 8. |
| Madonna del Popolo, Spoltore, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy (Madonna of the People). Shrine in Church of San Panfilo. Statue crowned, 1906. Festa first Sunday in September. |
| Madonna del Carmelo, Villa Baldassarri, Guagnano, Salento, Puglia, Italy. First festa, 1767. Now day after first Wednesday of September. |
| Santa Maria Odigitria, Piana degli Albanesi, Palermo, Sicily, Italy. Town's patronal festa commemorates earthquake of 1726. |
| Matka Boża, Tulce, Kleszczewo, Poznań, Greater Poland, Poland (Mother of God). Statue crowned, 1979. Feast Sunday before September 8. |
| Matka Boża Pocieszenia, Orchówek, Włodawa, Lublin, Poland (Consoling Mother of God), in Church of St. John the Merciful. Icon crowned, 1990. |
| Virgen del Valle, La Granjuela, Córdoba, Andalucía, Spain. Village's patronal fiesta. |