Saint Bartolo Longo

Saint Bartolo Longo was a lawyer from southern Italy and a lay apostle of the Rosary. He founded the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii and works of charity for orphans and the children of prisoners. His memorial falls on October 5, the anniversary of his death.

He was born on February 10, 1841, in Latiano in Apulia and was raised in the Catholic faith. In 1863 he came to Naples to complete his law studies. Under the influence of friends and professors he drew close to spiritualist circles and abandoned the faith completely. Professor Vincenzo Pepe and the Dominican Alberto Radente led him back to the Church. After his conversion he devoted himself to prayer and works of charity, and in time became a Dominican tertiary.

Through Saint Caterina Volpicelli he met Countess Marianna Farnararo De Fusco, widowed young and the mother of five children. In 1872 he went to the Valley of Pompeii to manage her estate. Tormented by the question of whether, after his past errors, he could be saved, he heard in his heart, as he himself recounted, the words “Whoever spreads the Rosary is saved!” He took them as his vocation and resolved not to leave the valley until he had spread devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary there. He began by teaching the catechism to the farmers.

On November 13, 1875, an image of Our Lady of the Rosary was brought to Pompeii. Longo wanted to raise an altar in her honor, but the Bishop of Nola proposed that he build a new church instead, whose cornerstone was laid on May 8, 1876. In 1877 Longo composed the devotion of the Fifteen Saturdays, through which, as John Paul II wrote, he promoted the Christocentric and contemplative heart of the Rosary. On October 14, 1883, twenty thousand pilgrims recited for the first time his Supplication to the Queen of the Holy Rosary, written in response to an encyclical of Leo XIII. In 1885 he married Countess De Fusco, co-founder of the whole work.

In 1887 Longo opened an orphanage for girls, in 1892 a home for the sons of prisoners, and in 1922 a home for their daughters. He was convinced that the children of convicts could grow up to be good people and rescue their parents from despair; the first boy he took in became a priest. Together with his wife he offered the shrine to Leo XIII, who in 1894 accepted it as the property of the Holy See. In 1897 he founded the Dominican Sisters, Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii.

Bartolo Longo died in Pompeii on October 5, 1926. John Paul II beatified him on October 26, 1980, calling him the apostle of the Rosary and the man of Our Lady. Pope Francis agreed in 2025 to his canonization without the examination of a miracle, and Leo XIV declared him a saint on October 19, 2025, in Saint Peter’s Square, calling him in his homily a benefactor of humanity.