Fact-Check: Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Our Mother of Perpetual Succour, colloquially known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help, is a Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a fifteenth-century Byzantine icon and a reputed Marian apparition. The image has been enshrined in the Church of San Matteo in Via Merulana since March 27, 1499, and is today permanently enshrined in the Church of Saint Alphonse of Liguori, where the official novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help is prayed weekly.

Pope Pius IX granted a pontifical degree of canonical coronation along with its formalized title Nostra Mater de Perpetuo Succursu on May 5, 1866. The Latin Patriarch of Constantinopole at that time (this office was abolished in 1964), Cardinal Ruggero Luigi Emidio Antici Mattei, executed the rite of coronation on June 23, 1867.

The Congregation of the Most Holy Rredeemer serve as the custodians of the icon. The image is alternatively named as the "Virgin of the Passion of Christ" in the Eastern Orthodox religion. Novena prayers are held before its feast day on June 27 of every year. Due to the promotion of the Redemptorist Fathers, the image has gained popularity amongst pious Roman Catholics. Modern reproductions are often displayed in residential homes, commercial establishments, and even public transportation.

The Cretan image originated as an Eastern Orthodox icon of the Passion called Amolyntos which depicted the Madonna and Child along with two angels carrying the Holy Instruments of the Passion of Jesus Christ.

The current title derives from the external door tymphanum of the Augustinian Church of San Matteo in Via Merulana, where the antiquated inscription from 1579 once bore the invocation:

Deipare Mater et Virginis Succursi Perpetui (in English: Virginal Mother who bore God, may always Assist us.)

The Order of Saint Augustine already had a devotion to this Marian title based on a namesake cloistered monastery "Our Lady of Help" in Corleone, Palermo, Sicily, Italy.

This posthumous title was formalized by Pope Pius IX based on the history of the older church that housed the icon in the present accorded title "Holy Mother of Perpetual Succour" (Latin: Sancta Mater de Perpetuo Succur). Today, the same decorative style is presently reconstructed in its current original shrine.

In 1798, French troops under Prince Louis-Alexandre Berthier occupied Rome as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, establishing the short-lived Roman Republic and taking Pope Pius VI as prisoner. Among the several churches demolished under the French occupation was San Matteo in Via Merulana, which housed the icon. The Augustinian friars who rescued the icon first took it to the nearby Church of Saint Eusebius, then later set it up on a side altar in the Church of Santa Maria on Posterula.

In January of 1855, the Redemptorist priests purchased Villa Caserta in Rome along the Via Merulana and converted it into their headquarters. Decades later, Pope Pius IX invited the Redemptorist Fathers to set up a Marian house of veneration in Rome, in response to which the Redemptorists built San'Alfonso di Liguori at that location. The Redemptorists were thus established on the Via Merulana, not knowing that it had once been the site of the Church of San Matteo and shrine of the once-famous icon.

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