Icon Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s entrusted to the Redemptorists with the mission of "making it known throughout the world"

The Roman icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help originated from the Mediterranean island of Crete, where it is believed to have been painted on wood after the year 1400. It was taken to Rome around 1490 by a merchant who wanted to protect it from the Turks threatening to invade Crete. On his deathbed, the merchant entrusted the icon to a friend and asked him to have the image placed in a church. 

The friend's wife found the image so beautiful that she wanted to keep it in her home. The friend also died before fulfilling his promise. His six-year-old daughter had a vision of the Blessed Virgin who asked that the image be placed in the church of St. Matthew in Rome, run by Augustinian monks. This was done on March 27, 1499. 

Irish Augustinian monks, driven out of Ireland by persecution, took over the direction of St. Matthew's Church in 1739 and inherited the icon. St. Matthew's was destroyed during Napoleon's invasion of Rome in 1798, but fortunately the icon was saved. In 1819 what remained of the Irish Augustinian community moved to the church of St. Mary in Posterula in Rome, near the Tiber River. Since Our Lady of Grace was already venerated there, the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was placed in a secondary oratory where it was almost forgotten, except by an elderly Augustinian friar who had seen it often in the church of St. Matthew. He showed it to a young mass server, Michel Marchi, with whom he had become friends.

In 1863, a Jesuit priest who was preaching a retreat in Rome asked where the miraculous image of the ancient church of Saint Matthew had gone. Research was undertaken. The young Marchi, who had become a Redemptorist, remembered that he had seen the image when he was a young Mass server with the Augustinians, and that he knew where it was. 

In December 1865, the Superior General of the Redemptorists asked Pope Pius IX to return the image to the place where it had originally been placed. The pope granted the request. The icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was thus given to the Redemptorists in 1866 with the mission of "making it known throughout the world".

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