Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major

Feast Day: August 5

The feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, observed on August 5th, commemorates the foundation of the oldest Marian basilica in the Western world, one of the four major basilicas of Rome and one of the most sacred sites of Marian devotion in all of Christendom. The basilica stands on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and has been a place of pilgrimage and prayer in honour of the Mother of God since the fourth century.

According to a beautiful tradition, the site of the basilica was revealed by a miraculous snowfall on the night of August 4 to 5, in the year 352 or 358, on the Esquiline Hill, normally parched and hot in the Roman summer. The Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared in a dream to a wealthy Roman patrician named John and to Pope Liberius, separately, instructing each of them to build a church on the spot where they would find snow in the morning. When they met and compared their visions they went to the Esquiline and found the hill covered in snow, tracing the outline of the church to be built. This tradition has given the basilica the alternative name of Our Lady of the Snow.

The basilica was magnificently rebuilt and enlarged by Pope Sixtus III after the Council of Ephesus in 431, which had defined the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God. The great mosaic cycle in the nave, dating from this period, is among the most important early Christian artistic programmes in existence. The basilica preserves in its Borghese Chapel what tradition holds to be relics of the crib of Bethlehem, venerated as fragments of the manger in which the Infant Jesus was laid.

Among its many treasures is the ancient icon known as the Salus Populi Romani, Protectress of the Roman People, which has been venerated in the basilica for many centuries and which Pope Francis visits regularly to pray before Our Lady. The basilica has been a centre of papal devotion to Mary throughout the centuries, and the feast of its dedication celebrates not only a building but the unbroken tradition of Marian prayer that has filled it since the days of the early Church.