BLESSED BARTOLO LONGO, FORMER SATANIST PRIEST

"Healthy people don't need a doctor; sick people do." Thank heaven--for all our sakes.

BLESSED BARTOLO, ESTABLISHING THAT THERE IS HOPE FOR ALL OF US

Blessed Bartolo Longo (1841-1926), former Satanist priest, returned to the Catholic faith, became a third order Dominican, and devoted his life to the Rosary and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Born to a devout Italian family in 1841, Bartolo frequently prayed the Rosary with his family as a child. But his mother died when he was 10 and, while at college in Naples, he fell in with members of an occult group, lapsed completely from the faith, and began engaging in séances, fortune-telling and orgies.

He even went so far as to be ordained a satanic priest. He performed black masses and, at every turn, publicly ridiculed Catholicism. But he also fell into nervous exhaustion, depression, melancholia.

One day he heard the voice of his deceased father, entreating: "Return to God! Return to God!" He turned to an old friend from his hometown, Professor Vincenzo Pepe, for spiritual guidance. Shocked at Bartolo’s decrepit appearance, the professor asked: “Do you want to die in an insane asylum, and then be damned forever?”

The question brought Bartolo to his senses. Under Professor Pepe’s guidance, he forswore Satan. Fr. Alberto Radente, a Dominican priest,heard his Confession. He had undertaken to redeem his life.

At the age of 30, on the Feast of the Assumption, Bartolo became a Third Order Lay Dominican. He took the name Brother Rosario, after Mary and his devotion to the Rosary.

He restored a church in Pompeii, installing a thrift-store painting of the Blessed Virgin. Miracles occurred. Pilgrims flocked to the site. In a treatise entitled “The History of the Shrine of Pompeii” Bartolo cast his work as a corrective to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD:

"Next to a land of dead appeared, quite suddenly, a land of resurrection and life: next to a shattered amphitheatre soiled with blood, there is a living Temple of faith and love, a sacred Temple to the Virgin Mary.”

"What is my vocation? To write about Mary, to have Mary praised, to have Mary loved."

In 1885, Longo entered into a chaste marriage with Countess Mariana di Fusco, a wealthy widow who shared his passion for charitable works.

He tirelessly supported orphans and the poor, attended Confession twice weekly, and in his later years, gave all his property to the Holy See.

One inhabitant of Pompeii observed, "I often saw him with his arms outstretched and his eyes fixed on heaven or on the image of Our Lady, or even with his eyes half-closed, totally enraptured without being aware of those around or near him."

His last words were reputed to have been: "My only desire is to see Mary, who has saved me and who will save me from the clutches of Satan."

It was recently announced by Pope Leo that he will be canonized on October 25, 2025.

Blessed Bartolo reminds us of three things. One: the Church has never claimed to be a bastion of mental health. Two: no-one is beyond redemption. And three: the more impure we have been, the more we need Mary.