The Madonna of the Bombs

The “Madonna of the Bombs” owes her sobriquet to the fact that the image was left miraculously undamaged during the March 1, 1944, bombardment of the buildings facing the Square of the Holy Office.

That night, at around 8 p.m., as J. S. Grioni recounts: “Powerful explosions from six bombs dropped from an airplane struck the buildings around the square. Shards of debris struck the palace, piercing through walls into the apartments and shattering nearly all the windows, except the glass protecting Our Lady of Grace, which remained inexplicably intact at the center of a dense circle of damage from flying shrapnel, clearly visible around the image.”

The image is found between the palace of the Holy Office and the entrance to the Pontifical Oratory of Saint Peter, on a stretch of wall enclosed in a small garden. After the events of the war, and after the miraculous event, the Oratory of Saint Peter commissioned the image to be surrounded by the new marble frame with two large angels on either side protecting it, bearing studded shields.

Aleteia