Santo Bambino of Aracoeli

History and devotion

The wooden image measures approximately 60 centimeters tall and depicts the Child Jesus as an infant. According to historical records preserved at the Basilica Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the image was carved from a single block of olive wood from the Garden of Gethsemani by a Franciscan friar assigned to the Holy Land in the fifteenth century.

Pilgrimages to the images are recorded as early as 1794. In February 1798 the image was seized by French troops but ransomed by Roman aristocrat Serafin Petraca, thus saving it from being burned. It remained in a convent in Trastevere for a little over a year while a new shrine was built.

The Bambino is customarily placed in the crèche at the Basilica at Christmas. In 1838, thieves, ostensibly bending to kiss the made, made off with a considerable part of the jewelry with which he was adorned. During anti-Catholic protests in 1848 Carlo Armellini saved Santo Bambino from arson.

Romans have long associated the image with healing. According to one account, sometime in the 1800s a member of the noble Torlonia family became seriously ill and the friars were asked to bring Santo Bambino to the sickbed. The friars obliged and the person recovered. Thereafter, Prince Alessandro Torlonia used a carriage that belonged to Pope Leo XIII to spend his Thursdays bringing the image on "house calls" to the sick unable to get to the Basilica. Until the beginning of the 20th century a coach of Prince Torlonia stood day and night available to bring the Bambino to the bedside of a sick person.

Tradition of letters

Today, the chapel is filled with letters from all over the world, some of them addressed only to "Il Bambino, Rome". After a few weeks, to make room for new incoming ones, the letters are removed and burned with incense unopened. According to one of the Franciscan custodians, "What is in the letters, is a matter between the Bambino and the letter writer and does not concern us." In the past, in the period between Christmas and Epiphany, children six to ten years of age could stand on a specially built platform to speak to Santo Bambino, but this custom has fallen out of practice, being replaced by the mainstream religious procession.

Pontifical recognitions

On 18 January 1894, Pope Leo XIII authorised the devotion to the image, along with a rescript and prayer dedicated to the infancy of Jesus. The papal document was witnessed by Cardinal Ignatius Persico. On 2 May 1897, the Pontiff issued a canonical coronation towards the image through the Vatican Chapter.

The image was also mentioned in a 1969 letter to the College of Cardinals given by Pope Paul VI for the 1969 World Day of Peace on New Year's Day.

On 8 January 1984, Pope John Paul II issued a homily blessing the title and its image at the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall on the solemn occasion of Jubilee year for children.

Theft of the image

The statue itself was adorned with valuable ex-votos. It was customarily stored at night in a secured cabinet, but on 1 February 1994 at approximately 4:00 PM, two thieves masqueraded as workers on a scaffold erected in the monastery for renovations. By one account, the thieves ransacked the friars' rooms looking for valuable objects, and coming to the room where the image was stored at night, found the armored cabinet open. Another version says the statue was still inside the church on display in the crèche, which was to be taken down the next day. While the police believed it would be difficult to recover any of the gold and valuables taken with the image, they considered Santo Bambino too well known to be easily marketed. The theft of Santo Bambino caused considerable outrage in Rome. A number of wealthy individuals offered to underwrite a ransom, but the Franciscan Order discouraged that approach and proceeded to have a copy made. The prison inmates at Regina Coeli penitentiary wrote a petition to their anonymous "colleagues" asking for its return, and that having failed donated money for the new copy.

Accordingly, the original statue is also venerated today in the church of Saint John the Baptist church in Giulianello in Cori, Lazio, where it is revered and under secured custody of the Salviati and Borghese clan, while the copy was placed in Santa Maria in Araceoli. Pious tradition in Cori maintains that the Prefect of Pontifical Household, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Archbishop of See of Teodosia (Extinct) in the 18th century donated the image to the church of San Giovanni in Giulianello in an effort to prevent the image from being stolen or desecrated by left-wing Jacobin militants. A solar brooch depicting the allegorical image Sun of Justice was attached to the image, later stolen, and was associated with the Milanese jeweler Carlo Sartore. The Sun of Justice is depicted in older 19th-century lithographs of the image.

Legends

Pious tradition holds that when the friar did not have the paints necessary to finish his work, it was completed by an angel. Upon his return to Italy, the ship was wrecked during a storm. The friar survived and later found the statue washed up on the shore at Livorno. A second tale relates that in 1797, the Princess Paolina Borghese wishing to have the statue for herself, had a copy made. When her cousin became gravely ill, the family requested that the Bambino be brought, but returned the copy. However, at midnight while the bells rang at Santa Maria in Araceoli, the statue miraculously returned to its rightful place, thus inspiring the famous urban legend tale of a Roman noblewoman pretending to be sick with the ulterior motive to take the image to her home.

According to tradition, the lips of the Holy Child turn red when a request is going to be granted, and white when the cause presented is hopeless.