Ann Rennie Reflects

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page. (Saint Augustine)

I was absolutely thrilled, as were any number of my school friends, when our new Pope Leo XIV visited Genazzano a couple of days after his ascension to the papacy.  This was his first visit outside the Vatican.  He was driven in the front seat of a minivan to the small town, forty miles from Rome.  Here he prayed in the Basilica of Madonna de Buon Consiglio (Our Lady of Good Counsel) which is looked after by the Augustinians, the religious order to which he belongs.  He prayed where I had prayed on my own personal pilgrimage fourteen years earlier when I dragged my husband and my Gen girl daughter, Grace (2013), to this lovely medieval town, just so I could satisfy both my innate curiosity and a spiritual yearning.

Enraptured with the piety of a girl who internalised without question all the stories of the saints, I was immersed into the reality of fabulous founding fables and the miraculous and mystical world of apparitions and visitations.  And as someone who possesses what used to be called school spirit, I knew that one of my travel destinations would one day be this special place. 

To get to Genazzano, we caught the train from Roma Termini to the end of the A line and took a bus from Anagnina, spiralling up the hill passing little hamlets on the way.  Plain from the outside, the interior of the church is stunning, full of gilt and ebonised wood, large devotional paintings and marble statues.  These are the gifts of unknown artists who understood the peasant heart that needed to kneel and pray before beauty; the peasant heart that had to feel its way towards a hope that lifted them from the hard reality of struggling and cheerless lives.  I particularly loved the exquisitely sculpted altar cherubs who looked as though they had been up to some mischief and had momentarily stopped playing. 

All my life I have seen reproductions of this venerated picture of mother and child.  The icon is tiny.  It is not as arresting and exquisite as many Renaissance paintings but has its own special aura.  Mother and child are nestled and nuzzled into each other in an artistic paean to loving maternity.  However, its importance is not in the aesthetic, but in its meaning to those who venerate it. 

The legend of the fresco starts in the 15th century when a wealthy widow, Petruccia de Geneo, used all her funds to restore the church that had fallen into dilapidation.  She was mocked for her dogged devotion especially as her money began to run out.  According to tradition, on St. Mark’s Day, 1467, while the entire population of the town participated in a carnival, a cloud descended from a clear sky.  Enveloped in that celestial fleece was a small picture of Our Lady and the Blessed Child which, somehow, attached itself to the church’s wall.  The miraculous flight of the icon from Albania is recorded in a huge genre painting at the back of the basilica.  With the pieties and superstitions of the Middle Ages and its devotional practices, this story took hold of the popular imagination and it became a popular place of pilgrimage.  More recent research suggests that the icon was painted by a minor artist, Gentile da Fabriano.

I had to see for myself the place after which the school was named – a visit to satisfy my curiosity and embed my understanding of how a school in colonial Victoria could have possibly been named after a small village in Lazio, Italy.  For the first short while of its existence, the new convent school in Kew, designed by William Wardell who is famed for his work on St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Mary’s in Sydney, did not have a name.  Felicitously, one was found just before its dedication by the Governor, Lord Hopetoun, in 1890. (Genazzano students will know that the foundation stone notes that the Countess of Hopetoun ceremoniously opened the school, but on the day, she was not well, so her husband graciously stepped in to do the honours). 

Mother Mary John Daly fcJ had been reading to the community a book published by Monsignor Dillon.  She particularly wanted a one-word name for the school and all the sisters wanted to have a name that referred to Our Lady of Good Counsel.  The first time the word Genazzano was mentioned all the sisters spontaneously looked up from their work. 

It was a sign!

Whenever I think of Our Lady of Good Counsel, I think of that mould-breaking woman of history; the peasant girl Mary who lived two millennia ago in an ancient Palestine administered by the Romans.  Mary took the huge risk of love in her fearless fiat to Gabriel’s annunciation that she would bear a child.  And I also think of other ladies of good counsel, the Sisters FCJ, who have also taken risks in their daring to live a different sort of life.  I would like to think, too, that many of us are men and women of good counsel as we go about our lives.

Prior to Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit, a number of other popes have visited Genazzano because of its worship of Our Lady and its many Marian shrines.  Saints, too, have knelt here in front of this modest picture: Saint John Bosco (who knew the Venerable Marie Madeleine d’Houët, foundress of the Faithful Companions of Jesus), St. Vincent Palotti, St. Clement Hoffbauer and the Augustinian priest Blessed Stephen Bellesini, whose remains are in a glass coffin in a modern chapel and who died of typhoid fever whilst ministering to victims of the plague.  Genazzano is also the birthplace of Pope Martin V whose papacy effected the end of the Western Schism at the Council of Constance in 1417 and brought about the end of the almost seventy-year Avignon papacy.  It is of note that in 1903, Pope Leo XIII had the Litany of Loreto, that beautiful prayer to Our Lady, amended to include the words mother of good counsel such was his devotion.

Genazzano is a small town with its medieval arch, well-worn buildings and old-fashioned streetlamps, its alleys decorated with householder pot plants and old wooden shutters open to the sun.  It has the rich but unpretentious patina of old Italy and one can imagine in the sleepy lassitude of a warm afternoon that the centuries are no longer numbered and that time stands still.  There may be modernisation, but it is well hidden in these terracotta hills.

It was a miracle that we actually got back to the train in one piece.  Our bus driver, young, handsome and careless went careering down the hairpin bends with suicidal speed as he conducted an animated conversation on his handheld mobile with the other hand on the roulette, I mean driver’s wheel.  Even the locals began yelling basta! – enough!  He may have known every stone in the road, but we did not and it was terrifying.  Prayers of gratitude were said as we alighted at Anagnina – and a few other words exchanged too, although they were probably lost in translation and perhaps not of the sanctified variety.

To have our new pontiff make such a special visit to the basilica at Genazzano in Italy and pray before the icon was a thrill for so many of us.  He recited, together with those present, Pope John Paul II’s prayer to the Mother of Good Counsel, the Hail Mary and the Salve Regina.  He reminded those listening of the words of Mary to Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana, Do whatever he tells you.

As we mourn the death of our beloved Pope Francis and his pastoral legacy, let us celebrate and pray for Pope Leo XIV.  That he has a particular allegiance to Our Lady of Good Counsel is a blessing for us.  His first words, Peace be with you, bode well as he takes up the mantle and ministry as a successor of Peter. 

Let us pray to Our Lady of Good Counsel for his protection and guidance as he begins to lead our one holy Catholic and apostolic Church.

By Ann Rennie