More Free Items at www.catholickingdom.com THE VIRGIN MOTHER GOOD COUNSEL. A HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNSEL IN GENAZZANO. AND OF THE WONDERFUL APPARtTION AND MIRACULOUS TRANSLATION OF HER SACRED IMAGE FROM SCUTARI IN ALBANIA TO GENAZZANO IN 1467. WITH AN APPESDIS ON THE XIBACULOUS CRUCIFIX, SAN PIO, ROMAN ECCLESIASTICAL EDUCATIOR ETC. BY THE REVD. GEORGE F. UILLON D. D. A VIB~T?JR FROM SYDIEY TO TlSE RIIRTSE ROME PRIXTED AT THE OFFICES OF THE SACRED COSGREGATIOX OF THE PROI'AGAXDA FIDE 1884. [The uzrthor rcsztT1es 1111 rigbtj of reprirrfing ltnd frartslation.] PRIVATE USE ONLY TO THE MOST EMINENT AND MOST REVEREND THOMAS M. CARDINALMARTINELLI, PBEPECT OF !CHE 8ACRED CONGREGATION OF THE INDEX, ETC. ETC. Most Eminent Prince, The writer, with the deepest sense of gratitude, taking advantage of your kind permission, - a permission all the more valued because never accorded to any author before - most respectfully dedicates this book to Your Eminence. The reason why Your Eminence has been pleased to grant this permission is not, in this particular instance, difficult to understand. The work treats of a venerable Sanctuary of Our Lady confided to Fathers of the great Order of which you are Cardinal Protector. It aims, according to the humble ability of the writer, at extending the deep and tender devotion to the More Free Items at www.catholickingdom.com Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, so characteristic of the land of your birth, and so specially dear to you, to the people to whom the miter belongs, - a people whom you love, and whose widespread migrations have carried the Faith whose purity Your Eminence as Cardinal Prefect of the Index, guards so ably and so vigilantly, to many parts of the world. Ever since your elevation to the sacred purple it has pleased Your Eminence to make your home in the Eternal City with representatives of that people. The young levites of your ancient institute destined to continue amongst them the ministratioils of religion which the sons of St. Augustine never ceased to carry on through terrible and long con- tinued trials now happily passed away, hare had the consolation and the advantage of your daily presence in their midst, during the last ten years. It has been your delight to consecrate to their instruction and edification whatever moments you could spare from the weighty charges laid upon' you by the Vicar of Christ, - to join with them in the long continued exercises of piety which usher in each day's holy labour, - to unite with them at night in the prayer and thanksgiving which PRIVATE USE ONLY precede repose, - to conduct for them during your short intervals of rest from the severe labours of your high office, the invaluable retreats and other spiritual exercises which so well prepare them for the work they are to do for the Church in after years. It has been the good fortune of the writer to participate largely in these advantages during his stay in Rome. And now as this stay draws to its close, he ia indeed happy to be permitted to associate the venerated name of Your Eminence with this effort to make Mary in one of Her most beautiful prerogatives - that of Virgin Mother of Good Counael - better known and better loved amongst that great section of God's people to which he belongs. He trusts his work may not be wanting in a blessing if for no other reason than that it was written under the same roof where the saintly and laborious life of Your Eminence ewes the inmates and manifests the latent strength, the real glory and identity of the Rome of our own day with the Rome of the past, in giving a true picture of the lives - lives so little understood by the world at large, lives so often misconceived and misrepresented by the More Free Items at www.catholickingdom.com enemies of Catholicity - of those who nearest to the sacred person of the Supreme Pastor, sustain with him tho burden of the guidance, the guardianship, and the government of the Church of God. Begging Your Eminence's blessing the writer remains with profound respect. Your most grateful humble servant. Santa Maria in Posterula, 143 Tordinona, Rome, Peast of the Immaculate Conception. 1883. PRIVATE USE ONLY PREFACE Italy is still pre6minently a land of faith and fervour. Invasions, secret societies, revolutions, and persecutions have done their worst to make it other- wise during the past hundred years. Writers of books of travel, newspaper correspondents, and others who cater for the prevailing anti-Catholic pre jndices of the majority of those who speak the English language, generally represent it as having grown at least indifferent, if not worse, under these trials. But the truth is that at no past period of its Christian history were the mass of the inhabitants of the country more attached to their religion, more firmly fixed in its principles, or more devoted to its practices than at the present moment. The writer of the following pages upon one of the most beautiful and useful manifestations of the faith More Free Items at www.catholickingdom.com V111 PREFACE of Italy, has had ample opportunity of witnessing what he here asserts. He visited that country for the first time early in the spring of the past year; and he confesses, he was prepared to see everywhere a great decay of religion in a nation where the Church had been universally plundered , where the Supreme Pontiff was dethroned and imprisoned, where the religious orders were suppressed, where the public observance of the Lord's Day and of many Christian practices had been legally abolished , where the recognition of Catholicity by the State was made a cruel farce, and where, in fine, the most formidable atheism the world has ever seen was, with supreme political power in its hands, astutely planning the eradication of Christianity from the social, political, and even individual life of the people. The aspect of some streets in several great cities on Sundays and festivals , the casual conversation of employds and others interested in the existing government , the language of journals circulating amongst the party in power, were calculated, at first, to confirm his worst fears. But fortunately for a more correct knowledge of Italy his stay was prolonged. Impaired in health after twenty years of missionary labour in Australia, he was advised to try for a PRIVATE USE ONLY PREFACE IX considerable period, the effects of change of air and locality, in the mild climate and varied scenery of that beautiful and historic land. This brought him gradually into communication with all classes of the people on the mainland and in Sicily. Their real condition, therefore, became thoroughly known to him. So far from being in sympathy with the wrongs done to their religion, or affected with the infidelity of t.he ruling faction, he found them heart and soul with the Church, and as hostile as ever to the inroads of atheism and heresy. The masses in Italy are, in fact, as he everywhere witnessed, as sorely tried as their clergy, and bear in patience burdens which no other people in Europe so situated are called upon to sustain. At least nine-tenths of them are earnest and practical Catholics, . and therefore they suffer rjther than become revolutionists. As a rule they keep out of political affairs - meaning, at present, the affairs of the Continental Freemasons. To all. attempts upon their religion they oppose a passive but determined resistance, which no effort of the infidels has been able to shake. In general, family life amongst them equals the purity and innocence of the farm-homes of Ireland. They live in truth by faith. But abve all, that which in the eyes More Free Items at www.catholickingdom.com X PREFACE of the writer most distinguishes them, and in which they are unsurpassed by any other people he has ever seen, is their intense and universal devotion to the Virgin Mother of God. Every practice of this devotion, common to the most fervent Catholics, is general amongst them, while they have besides a hundred beautiful ways of manifesting it, peculiar to themselves alone. It is shown in public, on the entrance gates, and streets, and squares of cities; on the fronts of houses and vineyards; on the road-sides; and to an unusual extent, in the churches and public edifices of the country. Then over the whole land, special sanct- uaries of the Madonna are scattered with great pro- fusion. To some of these, millions flock annually ; and to the least frequented, thousands come. Pil- grimages, chantings, silent prayer, alms-deeds, an'd fervent reception of the sacraments, are everywhere called forth by these wonderful shrines. No one is ashamed to confess and to honour Mary. Her pres- ence fills every home and is constantly before the minds of the inmates. In a word, devotion to Our Lady, so to speak, saturates the land. And it is not too much to say - indeed it is what the Cath- olics of Italy themselves thankfully proclaim - that PRIVATE USE ONLY PREFACE XI this deep devotion has been the cause of saving their faith from so many open and secret foes during the past three generations. It was only natural that the writer, when he became acquainted with a devotion to God's Mother so vivid and productive of good, should endeavour to have it adopted, so far as circumstances should permit, by his own race, by those who speak the same language as he does, and above all by that portion of them to whose service he had devoted hie life.