Our Lady of Hope to accompany Christmas liturgies in St. Peter’s Basilica

By Benedetta Capelli

The Jubilee of Hope will conclude under the gaze of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as a wooden image of Our Lady of Hope will be present in St. Peter’s Basilica throughout every liturgical celebration of the Christmas Season.

The image hails from the parish of Saint Mark the Evangelist in San Marco of Castellabate, in the southern Italian province of Salerno.

Our Lady of Hope’s image arrives in the Vatican on Monday, December 22, and will be placed near the Altar of the Confession. The image returns to her home parish after January 6, the Epiphany of the Lord.

Our Lady of Hope

Our Lady of Hope is depicted holding the Christ Child in her arms and, in her right hand, a golden anchor firmly planted in the ground.

The image recalls one housed in the Shrine of Saint Mary of Hope in Battipaglia, also in the province of Salerno, which was brought to the Vatican for the opening of the Jubilee in 2024.

The image of Our Lady of Hope was made by the Stuflesser Workshop in 1954 to commemorate the Marian Year proclaimed by Pope Pius XII.

After completion, families in the San Marco of Castellabate area welcomed her into their homes before she was placed in the church.

Our Lady of Hope was recently restored for the Jubilee and set back in her place at the beginning of the Holy Year.

Madonna loved by summer visitors

The wooden image, which stands 1.45 metres tall, enjoys deep devotion among the 1,300 local residents, as well as the many tourists who fill the hamlet of San Marco during the summer.

The feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Hope is celebrated on the last Sunday of August and is the only Marian feast dedicated to Our Lady of Hope in the Diocese of Vallo della Lucania.

During the triduum in her honor, a procession first carries a image of Mary painted on a nineteenth-century canvas—the work that inspired the wooden image made in the 1950s. The image is then taken as far as the port, where local fishermen recite a prayer entrusting themselves to Mary.

From the heart of the “periphery”

Our Lady of Hope comes from the “periphery,” from the area between the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park. It is a region affected by depopulation, where even basic services are not always guaranteed.

One year ago, Fr. Pasquale Gargione—then parish priest of Saint Mark the Evangelist, a church now led by Fr. Francesco Giordano—proposed bringing Our Lady of Hope to the Vatican, as a way of casting light on the reality of many inland Italian communities.

In these places, solitude is keenly felt, the population is aging, and inequalities are widening.

The Blessed Virgin Mary carries these burdens of hardship, as Our Lady of Hope stands as an icon of hope for the “little ones,” who find comfort and love in her maternal protection.