Our Lady of Loreto

Today we remember Our Lady of Loreto, and with her the Holy House. In Loreto, in the Marche, inside the basilica, are kept the walls of a small building that tradition identifies as the house in Nazareth where the family of Jesus lived. The legend says angels carried it through the air, first to Dalmatia and then here, in 1294, when the crusaders lost the Holy Land for good. Studies in recent decades have found an explanation that is less miraculous and perhaps more beautiful: the stones really are of Palestinian origin, worked with the techniques of that area, and some documents mention a Byzantine family named Angeli, which means “angels,” who in those years paid for shipping materials from the Holy Land. The angels who carried the house, in other words, may have been a family by that name. Loreto is one of the most visited Marian shrines in the world, and many have passed through it: Thérèse of Lisieux, Camilla Battista da Varano, Gianna Beretta Molla, and four popes in the last sixty years. Our Lady of Loreto is the patron saint of aviators — Benedict XV proclaimed her so in 1920, because of the house’s flight — and that’s why you almost always find her at Italian air bases. The Smorfia puts the Madonna at number eight. If your name is Loreta, today is your name day.