We have a pope, Pope Leo XIV!
One of the newly minted Holy Father’s “first visits” was to the beautiful image of Our Lady of Good Counsel:
Here is a picture of the painting of Our Lady of Good Counsel visited by Pope Leo XIV:
I wrote the following about this painting of Madonna and Child in April of 2021:
The icon of Our Lady of Good Counsel remains in the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano, Italy. The image is quite beautiful and reminds me of the mingling halos of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary mentioned by G.K. Chesterton in the following:
“You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all…we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.” ~G.K. Chesterton, from The Everlasting Man
May Our Lady of Good Counsel, pray for Pope Leo XIV!
And, may God bless Pope Leo with every grace needed for the office entrusted to him.
With thanksgiving to God for giving us a successor to St. Peter,
~S.C. Fischer, and The Marian Room
