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The dried blood of Naples’ third-century patron saint Gennaro liquefied at the city’s cathedral on Friday, in a recurring ‘miracle’ 17 centuries after the\u00a0martyr’s death.<\/p>\n
The reputed miracle was announced in the church at 10.07, accompanied by the traditional waving of a white handkerchief to signify the liquified state of the blood in the glass ampoule.<\/p>\n
The news was welcomed by lengthy applause from the faithful gathered inside the city’s Duomo, local news outlet NapoliToday reports.<\/p>\n
The recurring event occurs on three dates every year: 19 September (the saint’s feast day), 16 December and the first Saturday in May.<\/p>\n
On each occasion the faithful gather in the southern Italian city to witness the liquefaction of what is claimed to be a sample of San Gennaro’s blood, kept in a sealed glass ampoule.<\/p>\n
Three times a year this vial of dried blood is exposed for public veneration, with the “relatives” of San Gennaro – a group of elderly faithful – chanting litanies and prayers in a tradition dating back to the 19th century.<\/p>\n
San Gennaro, or St Januarius, was a bishop of Benevento in the third century, whose bones and blood are preserved as relics at the cathedral in Naples.<\/p>\n
He is believed to have been martyred by beheading during the Christian persecution under Emperor Diocletian around 305 AD.<\/p>\n
Legend has it that when Gennaro was beheaded, a Neapolitan woman soaked up his blood with a sponge and preserved it in a glass phial.<\/p>\n
According to local lore, if the blood of San Gennaro fails to liquefy it signals imminent disaster including war, famine or disease.<\/p>\n
The blood failed to liquefy on 16 December\u00a02020, on the eve of the covid pandemic, in what was seen by some as an omen of bad things to come.<\/p>\n
Superstitious Neapolitans believe it is a worse omen however if\u00a0the miracle does not occur on the saint’s feast day.<\/p>\n
Two months after the blood failed to liquefy on 19 September 1980, Irpinia – located 50 km east of Naples – was hit with a devastating earthquake that killed almost 3,000 people.<\/p>\n
On previous – but not all – occasions when the blood failed to liquefy on the saint’s feast day, it signalled bad news for Naples.<\/p>\n
The miracle also did not occur in 1939 and 1940, coinciding with the beginning of world war two and Italy’s entry into the conflict, and again in September 1943: the date of the Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n
Neapolitans have traditionally turned to their patron to protect them from natural disasters – according to the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire<\/em> – with crowds of people in the early centuries seeking refuge in the catacombs of Capodimonte.<\/p>\n So it happened in 472, 512 and 685, with the Neapolitan bishops of the time leading the prayers of the people.<\/p>\n It then became customary to invoke S. Gennaro to ask for an end to volcanic eruptions: in 1631, on 16 December, it was decided to exhibit the relics and the eruption of Vesuvius stopped.<\/p>\n The Catholic Church has always supported the celebrations but has never formulated an official statement on the ‘miracle’.<\/p>\n However it does not permit the sealed vial to be opened which has hampered scientific research into the phenomenon.<\/p>\n The blood did not melt during the visits of Pope John Paul II in 1990 or Pope Benedict XVI in October 2007 – reports Avvenire<\/em> – however it did liquefy when Pope Francis visited in March 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘Miracle’ occurs in Napoli on feast of San Gennaro. The dried blood of Naples’ third-century patron saint Gennaro liquefied at the city’s cathedral on Friday, in a recurring ‘miracle’ 17 centuries after the\u00a0martyr’s death. The reputed miracle was announced in the church at 10.07, accompanied by the traditional waving of a white handkerchief to signify<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[24501,24502,16633,10394,24503,5357],"class_list":["post-35183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eventi","tag-blood","tag-liquefies","tag-miracle","tag-naples","tag-recurring","tag-saint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}