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In Ajaccio this December 15, Pope Francis is scheduled to stop off at the Place des Palmiers to pay his respects to the small statue of the Madonuccia (the name is an affectionate diminutive of “Madonna”), located in a niche above the door of number 10. This attention to Ajaccio’s patron saint comes as no surprise, given the Pontiff’s affection for popular Marian piety.
Indeed, every March 18, the people of Ajaccio celebrate their patron saint, the Madonuccia — also written Madunnuccia — in a ritual that has remained unchanged since 1656. That year, several regions of present-day Italy were ravaged by the plague, notably the city of Genoa, at a time when no one knew how to contain this “scourge of God.” At the time, Corsica was Genoese, and seven ships from the Ligurian port carrying the disease were in sight and about to dock at Ajaccio. On land, the Genoese barricaded themselves in the citadel, leaving Ajaccio’s inhabitants at the mercy of the disease.
The entire population began praying to the saints, asking God to save their lives. They invoked St. Roch, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Sebastian, and all the patrons of the city’s districts. But their intercession seemed powerless to ward off the danger.
On March 18, the inhabitants of Ajaccio and Corsican leaders, meeting in the Council of Magnificent Elders, decided to place themselves under the protection of Our Lady of Mercy, vowing to make her their patron saint if she interceded on their behalf. Our Lady had appeared miraculously to a peasant in Savona, Italy, under this title a century earlier, on March 18, 1536.
The Madonuccia miracle
The townspeople took to the streets in a procession, and the miracle finally occurred. Winds blew the Genoese ships away from the coast and the town was saved from the great plague. Legend even has it that the ships were turned to stone by Our Lady, becoming the Sette Nave reef found on the other side of the gulf, near Isolella.
The Magnificent Elders, true to their vows, proclaimed Our Lady of Mercy the patron saint of Ajaccio. They decided that on each anniversary of this miracle, the people of Ajaccio would hold a procession to honor her in the streets of their town.
Since then, March 18 has always been a public holiday in Ajaccio, and the vow of the Magnificent Elders is read out by the city’s mayor and other officials. The Madonuccia’s niche in Place des Palmiers bears the Latin inscription “Posuerunt me custodem”: “They have placed me here so that I may protect them.”
Piety as the Pope likes it
The story of the Madonuccia recalls that of another Madonna that Pope Francis is particularly fond of, the Salus Populi Romani — ”Health of the Roman People.” This ancient Marian icon in Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major was carried in a procession in 593 by Pope Gregory I when the plague entered Rome and began to decimate the population, killing his predecessor Pelagius I among others.
Pope Francis has visited this icon more than 100 times since the beginning of his pontificate, notably before and after each apostolic journey. His devotion is such that he has announced his wish to be buried in a chapel adjoining the one where the image of Our Lady is located.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Pope Francis attached particular importance to another object particularly venerated by the people of Rome and associated with the pandemic: the miraculous Crucifix of San Marcello in Corso. The sculpture, which is said to have stopped the plague in Rome in 1522, was displayed alongside the image of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani at the Statio Orbis on March 27, 2020.
Pope Francis also showed his affection for Our Lady by presenting her with a golden rose in 2023.
He repeated the gift of the golden rose in Luxembourg last September before the image of Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted, also credited with putting an end to the plague in the 17th century, and before numerous other representations of the Virgin Mary from major Marian shrines in Aparecida, Guadalupe, Czestochowa, Fatima, Csiksomlyo, and Antipolo.
And today we celebrate...