Today is feast day of “Pope Leo’s Mary”
Feast day of "Pope Leo's Mary" observed on April 26, 2026. Celebration honors devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel, symbolized by the white scapular. Article highlights spiritual significance and encourages faithful participation. Post authored by Kathleen N. Hattrup and published on Aleteia.
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Today marks the feast day of “Pope Leo’s Mary,” honoring Our Lady of Good Counsel, a Marian devotion especially cherished by the Augustinian order to which Pope Leo XIV belongs. The celebration recalls the Pope’s first post‑election pilgrimage to the Genazzano shrine in May 2025, where he highlighted Mary as a “companion of light and wisdom” and urged the faithful to remain faithful to the Mother of God 1.
The feast celebrates the Marian title “Our Lady of Good Counsel,” whose image is linked to a 15th‑century miracle involving an Augustinian nun, Blessed Petruccia, in Genazzano, Italy. The devotion spread worldwide through Augustinian missionary activity 1.
The shrine in Genazzano was founded after a fresco of the Virgin and Child, allegedly rescued from a destroyed Albanian basilica, was entrusted to the Augustinians. The image quickly became associated with numerous healing miracles, prompting the construction of the Marian sanctuary 1.
Two days after his election, Pope Leo XIV traveled from Rome to Genazzano on 10 May 2025, the first papal trip outside the capital. During the visit he declared his “trust in the Mother of Good Counsel,” recalling Mary’s words at the Wedding at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you.” He spent private time with the Augustinian community and later addressed the crowd, describing the shrine as “a great gift” and urging believers to stay faithful to Mary 1.
The White Scapular of Our Lady of Good Counsel is a popular sacramental associated with the devotion. The Pope’s remarks have reinforced its use as a sign of “light and wisdom” for the faithful 1.
Assess the theological significance of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Catholic tradition
Our Lady of Good Counsel (often invoked as Mater Boni Consilii) is theologically significant in Catholic tradition not chiefly because of private spiritual “techniques,” but because the Church has integrated this Marian devotion into her liturgical life, her understanding of Mary’s maternal intercession, and her teaching that true counsel is a gift of the Holy Spirit that leads believers to recognize and do God’s will.
Catholic tradition connects “counsel” to a specific work of the Holy Spirit. In a general audience on the “gift of counsel,” Pope Francis describes counsel as something the Lord gives not only “in the intimacy of the heart,” but also through the lives and witness of believers who help one another discern God’s will.
He then uses a concrete Marian example: he recounts a man whose mother directed him—when facing a serious problem—to go to Our Lady so that she would show him what to do. The man reports that, after looking at Our Lady, he felt compelled to act (“I had to do this, this and this”). Pope Francis presents this not as replacing prayer or reason, but as an instance of God’s counsel mediated through Mary—and he explicitly frames the ability to give “good counsel” as itself a gift from God.
Pope John Paul II makes the same theological point in different language. In a reflection on prudence and governance, he urges asking for “the gift of counsel,” and adds that for oneself one should ask for it “through the special intercession of the Mother of Good Counsel.”
The theological significance, then, is that devotion to Our Lady of Good Counsel becomes a practical way of living the Church’s doctrine that:
The Church’s Marian devotion is not treated as a parallel channel to Christ, but as part of the Church’s worship that honors Mary in relation to Christ. A doctrinal note from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith explicitly highlights Mary’s intercessory character: it states that “the intercessory character of Mary’s maternal mediation is a constant teaching of recent Popes.”
In that light, “Good Counsel” is best understood as a relational and maternal mediation: Mary helps the faithful receive guidance that conforms them to God’s will. The devotion’s Church-sanctioned liturgical and devotional history shows that the faithful are meant to pray this title within Catholic worship—not outside it.
One of the strongest indicators of theological seriousness in Catholicism is whether a devotion is liturgically and pastorally received by the Church.
The Catholic Encyclopedia’s account of Our Lady of Good Counsel describes multiple papal approvals and integrations:
It also notes the origin narrative of the Genazzano image (including the shrine’s growing devotion and the eventual crowning of the image) and how, over time, the devotion spread through pilgrimages and clerical liturgical provision.
From a theological perspective, this means the Church does not treat “Good Counsel” as a merely local folk-title. Instead, the devotion is presented as ecclesial—carried by institutions, structured prayers, and (importantly) public liturgical forms approved by the Pope.
The title’s theology is also expressed pastorally: it is meant to shape ordinary life, especially familial and communal decisions.
In a 1993 address, Pope John Paul II connects “good counsel” to the vocation of the family and to the pastoral realities that surround it. He speaks of “good counsel” as the vehicle by which the family is served and extended into broader communities (parish, civil structures, and beyond).
So the devotion’s theological significance includes an anthropological and ecclesial dimension: Mary is invoked as Mother of Good Counsel so that Christians learn to respond to problems with guidance that is humane, just, true, and oriented to what is truly good—not merely convenient.
Finally, Catholic theology insists that Marian devotion must be Christ-directed rather than Christ-substituting.
A Vatican document (as published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis) describes Marian piety as an “intrinsic element of Christian worship” and notes that the renewal desired by the Second Vatican Council emphasized a biblical, Christological, ecclesial, and anthropological direction—so that Marian devotion becomes “a devotion that leads to our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Applied to Our Lady of Good Counsel, this means theologically: praying to Mary under this title is ordered toward discerning and doing God’s will in a way that draws the heart toward Christ, the “origin of all truth, holiness and devotion.”
Our Lady of Good Counsel holds theological significance in Catholic tradition because the Church presents this Marian devotion as: