Every September 19, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of San Gennaro martyr, whose blood, preserved for centuries in a reliquary, liquefies every year on specific dates, of great significance for the Church in Italy.
Saint Gennaro, or “Jenaro”, is the patron par excellence of Naples, a city in southern Italy where he was born on April 21, 272. He was bishop of Benevento, Campania, a diocese located next to his original Naples.
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
blood witness
In the years of the persecution organized by the Roman emperor Diocletian, known as the “Great Persecution” (303-313), Gennaro was taken prisoner along with a group of fellow Christians, and subjected to terrible torture.
The bishop and his friends refused to accept the demands of their persecutors, who demanded that they abdicate their faith and worship the gods. Despite the cruel mistreatment to which they were subjected, none of them were subdued, so they would all be sentenced to death.
First, an attempt was made to burn them alive in the oven, but the fire did them no harm. Afterwards, the men would be thrown to the wild beasts; The lions just roared and didn’t even come close to them. Until that moment, Genaro and his friends had miraculously managed to escape unscathed. Then, the Romans decided to apply the last resource they had: cut off their heads. On September 19, 305, the bishop and his friends were executed near Pozzuoli.
His remains were buried there.
blood liquefaction
For several centuries, the relics of San Gennaro were moved to different cities in Italy, until they finally returned to Naples in 1497, where they remain to this day.
There a glass vial is preserved in which a clot of the bishop’s blood is kept (a small mass of dried blood) that turns liquid on certain occasions. This phenomenon is called ‘liquefaction’; and since it is not carried out through physical or chemical intervention, the fact is recognized as a miracle.
Some question it, although no one has been able to explain with certainty how or by what means such a phenomenon occurs.
three times a year
The blood of San Gennaro becomes liquid on three occasions throughout the year: on the day that commemorates the transfer of his remains to Naples (the Saturday before the first Sunday in May); the day of his liturgical feast (every September 19); and the day on which his devotees thank him for his intercession to lessen the effects of the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, which occurred on December 16, 1631.
On each of these three days, the Bishop of the city, or a priest who proceeds in his name, presents the reliquary with the vial of blood, standing in front of the urn containing the skull of the saint. The act is always carried out in the presence of the faithful. After a period of time, whoever presides over the liturgy raises the reliquary, turns it upside down and, at that moment, the mass of blood becomes liquid. Then the celebrant makes the announcement: “The miracle has happened!”
If liquefaction does not occur
When the blood does not liquefy on the indicated days, Neapolitans think that it is a sign of bad omen – a possible misfortune or calamity of great proportions.
And there is no shortage of reasons for them to think this way. The blood did not liquefy, for example, in September 1939, 1940, 1943, terrible years of the Second War; There was also no liquefaction in 1973 or 1980. Something similar happened in 2016.
The relic also remained solid the year Naples elected a communist mayor, but spontaneously liquefied when the late Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Terence Cooke, visited the San Gennaro shrine in 1978.
The miracle of liquefaction and the Popes
In 2015, while Pope Francis met with the religious, priests and seminarians of Naples, the saint’s blood liquefied again.
The last time liquefaction occurred in the presence of a Pontiff was in 1848, when Pope Pius IX. During the visits of Saint John Paul II (October 1979) and Pope Benedict XVI (October 2007) to the Duomo of San Gennaro the blood did not change.
…
If you want to know more about the life of Saint Gennaro and about the miracle of the liquefaction of his blood, we recommend this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia: https://ec.aciprensa.com/wiki/San_Genaro.
Learn more about the life of Saint Genero and the miracle of the liquefaction of his blood:
Central Editorial
The Catholic Information Agency – ACI Prensa, is part of the news agencies of the ACI Group, one of the largest generators of Catholic news content in five languages and which has belonged since June 2014 to the EWTN Global Catholic Network family, the largest Catholic television network in the world, founded in 1981 by Mother Angelica in Irondale, Alabama (United States), and which reaches more than 85 million homes in 110 countries and 16 territories.