Blessed Bartholomew Longo (1841-1926)

Blessed Bartholomew Longo was born into a wealthy and devout Catholic family in southern Italy. While studying law, he drifted from the faith and got involved in the occult. He became a Satanic priest and participated in street demonstrations against the pope. His new lifestyle, however, left him nervous, confused, paranoid, and depressed. While in this state, he heard the voice of his deceased father urge him, “Return to God!”

A Dominican friar led him back to the Catholic faith and to a love for the rosary. “If you seek salvation, promulgate the rosary,” the friar told him. “This is Mary’s own promise.” Longo later would write of how this counsel struck him as he walked in Pompeii: “These words illumined my soul. I went on my knees.” He prayed: “If it is true, I will not leave this valley until I have propagated your rosary.”

Longo became a third-order Dominican and denounced the occult. Once he visited a séance in progress, held up a rosary, and declared, “I renounce spiritualism, because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood.”

Longo became a dynamo of evangelism and good works. He helped build the Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in Pompeii, where he is entombed today.

— Jim Graves