Borghese Chapel and Salus Populi Romani
The column in the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore celebrates the famous icon of the Virgin Mary now enshrined in the Borghese Chapel of the Basilica. It is known as Salus Populi Romani, or Health of the Roman People or Salvation of the Roman People, due to a miracle in which the icon helped keep plague from the city. The icon is at least a thousand years old, and according to a tradition was painted from life by St Luke the Evangelist using the wooden table of the Holy Family in Nazareth.
The Salus Populi Romani has been a favourite of several popes and acted as a key Mariological symbol. Roman-born Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) celebrated his first Holy Mass there on 1 April 1899. In 1953, the icon was carried through Rome to initiate the first Marian year in Church history. In 1954, the icon was crowned by Pope Pius XII as he introduced a new Marian feast Queenship of Mary. Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI all honoured the Salus Populi Romani with personal visits and liturgical celebrations.
Read more about this topic: Basilica Di Santa Maria Maggiore
Famous quotes containing the words chapel and/or populi:
“One thing’s certain. With a name like Abrahams, he won’t be in the chapel choir, now will he?”
—Colin Welland (b. 1934)
“A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf.... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then ... be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)