A basilica in Italy marks the spot of a bloody episode in early Church history —Â and is home to an image of Mary once lost in the hills for centuries.
On Sept. 15, a Catholic shrine in the small hilltop town of Lenola celebrates the local feast day of Our Lady of the Hill. The day, marked by Masses and — in pre-coronavirus times — a procession, honors the day a young man repented and converted after a murderous plot, before finding a centuries-old miraculous fresco of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus.