Saint Bartolo Longo

He was born at Latiano, in the province of Brindisi, on February 10, 1841, studied law at Lecce and then at the University of Naples, and became a lawyer. ¹ The shrine dates his arrival in Naples to 1863. ¹²

What happened there the sources tell with different degrees of bluntness. The Holy See biography says he abandoned the faith for a time and followed practices of spiritism. ¹ Benedict XVI, preaching at Pompeii in 2008, said that under the influence of "immanentist and positivist philosophers" he drifted from the faith, "had become a militant anti-clerical, and even indulged in spiritualistic and superstitious practices". ⁷ Vatican News put it in a sentence: a lawyer from Naples who initially despised the Church. ¹⁰

The Holy See dates his return to the practice of the faith to 1865. ¹ The shrine names the two men who brought him back, Professor Vincenzo Pepe and the Dominican Father Alberto Radente, and calls the conversion total. ¹² He became a Dominican Tertiary. ¹ Benedict XVI, in a Pauline year, compared him to the Apostle: "transformed from persecutor to apostle". ⁷

In October 1872 he went to the Valley of Pompeii to manage the estates of Countess Marianna Farnararo, widow of De Fusco, and found the people of the valley, in the Holy See's words, "completely abandoned". ¹ The shrine says he was still troubled there by doubts about his own salvation after the life he had led. ¹²

Each source gives the turning point in its own words. In the Holy See biography he prays to the Virgin: "If it is true what you promised… that those who promote the Rosary will be saved, I will be saved, because I will not leave this land of Pompeii without spreading devotion to your Rosary here." At that moment the Angelus bells rang, and he understood his mission. ¹ In the shrine's account it was noon and a voice came with the bells, telling him that if he spread the Rosary he would be saved. ¹² John Paul II, in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, describes it as an inspiration heard in the depths of his heart: "Whoever spreads the Rosary is saved!" ⁵

He began by teaching the catechism to the peasants, according to the shrine, restored the little parish church, and on the advice of the Bishop of Nola decided to build a new one. ¹² On November 13, 1875, he brought an image of Our Lady of the Rosary to Pompeii, and on May 8, 1876, the first stone of the shrine was laid. ¹¹² Leo XIV, at Pompeii 150 years later, noted that he laid it together with the countess. ⁴

He wrote devotional books and ran a newspaper, Il Rosario e la Nuova Pompei; the Holy See says he edited it, the shrine that he founded it in 1884. ¹¹² He spread the practice of the "Fifteen Saturdays", which John Paul II credited with promoting "the Christocentric and contemplative heart of the Rosary", and he had the support of Leo XIII, the "Pope of the Rosary". ⁵ Leo XIV said he offered pilgrims meditations meant to save the Rosary from mechanical recitation. ⁴

In 1883 he composed the Supplication to Our Lady of Pompeii. ¹ John Paul II wrote that he composed it in response to Leo XIII's appeal, in his first encyclical on the Rosary, for Catholics to work against the ills of society, and that it is solemnly recited twice a year, in May and October. ⁵ The shrine dates its first recitation to October 14, 1883, by twenty thousand pilgrims. ¹²

Two of his sayings are quoted by popes. John Paul II and Benedict XVI both quote his comparison of the Rosary to friendship: "Just as two friends, frequently in each other's company, tend to develop similar habits, so too, by holding familiar converse with Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, by meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary and by living the same life in Holy Communion, we can become, to the extent of our lowliness, similar to them". ⁵⁸ Leo XIV quotes a line from his newspaper in 1914: "The Eucharist is the living Rosary, and all the mysteries are found in the Holy Sacrament in an active and vital form". ⁴

He married Countess De Fusco, and the Holy See biography adds that the two always observed marital chastity. ¹ The shrine dates the wedding to April 1, 1885, in Naples, and says she had been widowed young with five small children, put her money into the work at Pompeii, and often decided its direction. ¹²

Around the building site a town grew up, with workers' housing, a telegraph, a railway station and a small hospital, by the shrine's account. ¹² In 1887 the couple opened an orphanage for girls, and then homes for the sons of prisoners in 1892 and for their daughters in 1922. ¹ The shrine calls the second his most original idea: that the children of convicts could be raised well, and might in turn rescue their parents from despair. ¹² He founded the Dominican Sisters, Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii, to look after them; the shrine dates the congregation to 1897. ¹¹² Benedict XVI called the result "a citadel of Mary and of charity". ⁷

The facade of the shrine was inaugurated on May 5, 1901, and dedicated to universal peace. ¹² John Paul II called that "a prophetic intuition", and Leo XIV said he had conceived it as a monument to peace. ⁴⁹ In 1906 Longo gave all his properties to the Holy See. ¹

The countess died on February 9, 1924, according to the shrine, and the following year Pius XI made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulchre. ¹² He died on October 5, 1926, at the age of eighty-five. ¹¹² Pompeii became a town in its own right in 1928, which the shrine says he had worked for and knew was coming. ¹³

John Paul II beatified him in Saint Peter's Square on October 26, 1980, and called him the man who had lived his commitment to the Church fully as a layman. ¹⁶ Pope Francis approved his canonization in February 2025, and Leo XIV canonized him on October 19, 2025, among seven new saints who were, in the case of Longo and José Gregorio Hernández, "benefactors of humanity". ²¹⁰¹² The next day Leo told the pilgrims that, "converting from a life far from God, he devoted all his energy to works of corporal and spiritual mercy". ³

He is patron of the city of Pompei. ¹³ The shrine reports that the Dicastery for Divine Worship granted the confirmation by which the Holy See accepted the Territorial Prelature of Pompei's choice of him as the city's patron, with the celebration set for October 5 each year; the town council supported the proposal. ¹³ No source consulted names him patron of anything else. ¹¹²

Saint Bartolo Longo's feast is October 5, the day he died. ¹¹¹¹³ Vatican News, reporting the Supplication at Pompeii on October 4, 2026, noted that the next day would be both his liturgical memorial and the hundredth anniversary of his death. ¹¹ The shrine's announcement of his patronage gives the same date for its yearly celebration. ¹³ At Pompeii the Supplication itself is recited on May 8 and on the first Sunday of October. ⁴¹¹¹³

He came to the Rosary out of fear for his own soul. ¹¹² The sources do not tidy that away: the prayer the Holy See gives him begins with an "if", and the shrine says he was tormented by doubt about whether a man with his past could be saved. ¹¹² What he did with the fear was to stay in a neglected valley and teach peasants their prayers. ¹²

John Paul II and Benedict XVI both chose his image of two friends who grow alike by spending time together. ⁵⁸ It is a modest claim for a prayer: not that it changes a person at once, but that company does, slowly, the way it does between people.

Leo XIV, preaching at Pompeii, said that a Rosary prayed well is "a wellspring of charity", and gave that as the reason Longo was an apostle of both. ⁴ The orphanage and the homes for prisoners' children were part of the same work as the shrine, and Leo XIV noted that the shrine's works still take in "the smallest and the weakest". ¹⁴ He gave away everything he owned twenty years before he died. ¹