ROME 25/4– Day 8: Holy Wednesday Birthdays

The Sun rise for Rome came at 06:26. The sun will set beyond the Gianicolo at 19:55.

The Ave Maria Bell is set to ring at 20:15.

Happy Birthday, Papa Ratzinger (1927)

Today is the “birthday” (dies natalis) of St. Benedetto Giuseppe Labre (+1783). He died on the evening of Holy Wednesday (today) and is buried at S. Maria dei Monti. St. Benedict Joseph Labre was not, I believe, fully a member of the Archconfraternity of Ss. Trinità, but he was always around the place, perhaps partaking of its charity.  He was a poor man, French, a Franciscan Tertiary, who wandered much as a pilgrim to different shrines, eventually coming to Rome. He had ecstasies when contemplating the crown of thorns and he would levitate or bilocate. In the last years of his life, he lived in Rome, for a time living in the ruins of the Colosseum.  He was famous as the “saint of the Forty Hours” (Quarant’ Ore) and Eucharistic adoration.  One of the works of the Archconfraternity at Ss. Trinità was monthly Quarant’ Ore.  It was the Eucharistic devotion of the confreres that fueled their charitable works of feeding and housing the pilgrims, the sick and the poor.

St. Benedict Joseph Labre lived by begging.  He is, therefore, dear to my heart.

Here is The Parish’s™ painting of him in the chapel dedicated to St. Philip.  As I write, this side of the church is closed off in scaffolding for restoration.

He is patron of the homeless.   His Mass texts are in the appendix of the Missale Romanum for “aliquibus locis”, this locus being Rome.  However, today being Holy Wednesday, he can only be commemorated.

Welcome registrant:

Crooked Castle 1391

Another saint who died on this day is St. Bernadette Soubirous (+1879).    Her Novus Ordo feast is today, the day of her death, but in the older calendar it is in February.  Watching The Song of Bernadette might be a good thing today.

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Not much of an appetite.   Some pizza bianca and mortadella.  Classic.

White to move and mate in 2. HOWEVER… do it without the first move being a check. The first move cannot be check.  (Not hard.)

[NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.]

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