Our Lady of Loreto

Their story

In the Italian hilltop town of Loreto, near the Adriatic coast, stands a great basilica built around a small stone house. According to a tradition that dates back to the late Middle Ages, this is the Holy House of Nazareth, the home where Mary lived and where the angel Gabriel announced that she would become the Mother of God. The Word became flesh within these walls. A beloved legend says that when the Holy Land fell into danger at the end of the Crusades, angels carried the house from Nazareth, first to what is now Croatia and then, in 1294, to Loreto. Historians suggest the stones may have been brought by Crusaders or by a family named Angeli. Studies of the stones have found that they resemble building materials used in Nazareth. Whatever the way it arrived, the Holy House has drawn pilgrims, popes and saints for more than seven hundred years. The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, often called the Litany of Loreto, is closely associated with this shrine. Because of the story of the house carried through the air, Pope Benedict XV named Our Lady of Loreto patroness of aviators and air travelers in 1920. In 2019 Pope Francis added her feast to the calendar of the whole Church on December 10.