Episode 6 – Rome Is Watching

When news of the Marian apparitions of Castelpetroso reached Rome in 1888, everything changed. What began as the testimony of two humble women in a small Italian village soon attracted the attention of Pope Leo XIII and the Vatican.

In this episode of The Little Lourdes of Italy, Danny Cicchino tells the remarkable story of the Church's investigation into the apparitions of Our Lady of Sorrows. Discover how Bishop Francesco Macarone-Palmieri personally reported the events to Pope Leo XIII, how he experienced an extraordinary vision at the grotto, and why the Holy See sent its own investigators—including the future Pope Benedict XV and scientists from the Vatican Observatory—to examine the site.

Rather than rushing to proclaim a miracle, the Catholic Church spent years gathering testimonies, studying evidence, and seeking the truth. It is a powerful story of faith, discernment, and one of Italy's most fascinating Marian shrines.

A phone call across the ocean. In this episode, Danny Cicchino shares the story of Nicola Antonio Di Marzio, a member of the Italian diaspora living in Florida whose family roots reach back to Castelpetroso.

Halfway through "The Story of a Miracle," this is a quieter, more personal chapter — the story of one man whose heart never left the mountain where Our Lady of Sorrows appeared in 1888, told by the friend who picked up the phone to hear it.

🎙️ Hosted by Danny Cicchino, president of the Society of Castelpetroso Descendants
🏛️ A project of the Basilica Minore dell'Addolorata, Castelpetroso (Molise, Italy)

Learn more about the Shrine and the podcast:
👉 www.santuarioaddolorata.it/en/podcast/

📩 comunicazione@santuarioaddolorata.it

In July 1888, a few months after two peasant women had seen Our Lady of Sorrows on the rock of Cesa tra Santi, something else happened on that mountain. At the base of the rock, just below the place of the apparitions, water began to flow. It was the middle of an unusual dry season — streams had run low, wells were giving little, the fields were parched. And then, suddenly, there was water.

In this fourth episode of The Little Lourdes of Italy, Danny Cicchino tells the story of the miraculous spring of Castelpetroso — the spring that, more than anything else, would earn this remote village in Molise its name as the "Little Lourdes of Italy."

Danny follows the news as it traveled north — all the way to Bologna, where a Catholic publisher named Carlo Acquaderni had founded a small magazine called Il Servo di Maria in January of that same year, before the apparitions had even taken place. Acquaderni had already written to the parish priest of Castelpetroso asking for some of that water, long before his own young son Augusto fell gravely ill with scarlet fever. When the moment came, the water was already in his house in Bologna. And Augusto recovered.

Episode 4 explores:• The appearance of the spring at Cesa tra Santi, in the summer of 1888• The first conversions — and the first physical healings that followed• Carlo Acquaderni and the recovery of his son Augusto• The quiet parallel with Lourdes, where thirty years earlier another spring had begun to flow at the feet of a young French girl named Bernadette Soubirous

This is a story not only about physical healing. It is also — and perhaps above all — about a change of heart that so often came before it.

Listen to all episodes and read more about the Shrine at:👉 www.santuarioaddolorata.it/en/podcast/

Short link: bit.ly/littlelourdesAll platforms: linktr.ee/basilicaaddolorata

The Little Lourdes of Italy — Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows is produced by the Basilica Minore dell'Addolorata in Castelpetroso, Molise (Italy).

Narrated by Danny Cicchino, president of the Society of Castelpetroso Descendants.