Loreto and the Holy House

IN reply to a petition made to him by the Bishops of the Province of Piceno, in which Loreto stands, our Holy Father Pope Benedict XV. has issued a Decree, dated April 12, 1916, ordering the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House to be henceforth observed each year, on the loth of December, in all the Dioceses and Religious Congregations of Italy and the adjacent isles. Moreover, by the same Decree he grants permission for the extending of the festival to all other Dioceses and Religious Congregations, on its being applied for by the Ordinaries. The Pontiff expressly grounds the granting of this favour on the acknowledged pre-eminence of the Loreto Sanctuary, it being, as the preamble states, "the House itself-translated from Palestine by the ministry of Angels-in which was born the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in which the \'Yord was made flesh." In view of this decisive pronouncement of the reigning Pontiff as to the peculiar sanctity of the Loreto Shrine, it is hoped that the following account of that peculiarly sacred shrine and of its wondrous history, on which the writer has been engaged for several years, will be welcomed by many, and especially by those to whom the attacks of critics on the Holy House have given pain. The groundlessness of those attacks, and the solidity of the foundation on which the Loreto tradition rests, are here, he trusts, made plain. It was a special encouragement to him in his pursuance of the work to receive, through his Superior, the blessing on it of the late saintly Pope Pius X., a few weeks before his death. In obedience to the Decrees of Pope Urban VIII. he unreservedly sublnits what he has written to the judgment of the Holy See, especially with reference to the luentioning of any occurrence as miraculous.