Church, the miracle of San Gennaro has been repeated

The prodigy of the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples, was repeated. At 9:26 a.m., the ampulla with the saint’s blood was shown to the faithful gathered in the cathedral after a procession, opened by Archbishop Monsignor Mimmo Battaglia from the chapel where the reliquary holding the ampulla with the saint’s relics is located, to the high altar.

There are three dates on which the prodigy is repeated: the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May, in memory of the translation of the remains from Pozzuoli to Naples; Sept. 19, the anniversary of the martyrdom, which took place under Diocletian; and finally, Dec. 16, when, according to tradition, in 1631, the statue of the saint carried in procession stopped the lava from Vesuvius at the city gates without destroying it.

Msgr. Battaglia: “San Gennaro celebration is not oracle.”

“It matters little, my brothers and sisters, whether the blood melts or not: let us never reduce this celebration to an oracle to be consulted! Believe me, what really matters to the Lord, what our bishop and martyr Gennaro forcefully asks of us, is the daily commitment to bet on love, to dissolve the lumps of selfishness, to break the solid dams that hold back the good by letting the sap of love, like blood, flow through the veins of the body of this city, down to the last capillary, giving everyone hope, trust, the possibility of redemption and newness of life!” This was said by the Archbishop of Naples, Monsignor Domenico Battaglia, during his homily on the occasion of the San Gennaro celebrations.