Mary Mystical Rose, Mother of the Church. Our Lady's Apparitions at Montichiari and Fontanelle

This, in short, is Mons. Galbiati’s report, the fruit of his studies and of his personal beliefs. Fontanelle is the secluded countriside location near Brescia where Our Lady appeared to Pierina Gilli in 1966 and blessed a clear water spring which is believed to be miraculous by pilgrims from the whole world – particularly from Germany and Latin America, but even from China, Sri.Lanka and India. Here the Virgin appeared four times, always on important days for the liturgy of the Church: Low Sunday, the thirteenth of May, the anniversary of Fatima; and on the feasts of Corpus Christi and Transfiguration. Introducing herself with the titles of Mystical Rose and Mother of the Church, and associating those titles to her role of mediation between God, her Son Jesus and men, Our Lady asked for the conversion of hearts and promised spiritual and bodily health to those who would approach that Font with faith. The «Mystical Rose» had already visited Pierina thirty years before in the nearby little town of Montichiari, appearing to her several times, even inside the cathedral. This first cycle of apparitions had been addressed in particular to consecrated souls, and Our Lady had shown much sorrow for those abandoning or betraying their vocation. Pierina Gilli (1911-1991) was accompanied through her whole life by the Mystical Rose, who sometimes appeared to her together with Saint Maria Crocifissa Di Rosa, the foundress of the local religious order of the Ancelle della Carità; while once she came with Jacinta and Francisco, the two little shepherds of Fatima, who went to Heaven as children shortly after the apparitions of 1917. This connection is not incidental: in the apparitions of Montichiari and Fontanelle Our Lady explicitly referred to Fatima, underlining that, while she had come to Portugal to lead men back to God, asking for the consecration to her Immaculate Heart, she came again in the land of Bonate (near Bergamo, where she appeared to little Adelaide Roncalli) and then here, at Brescia, respectively to call families and consecrated people fo fulfil her plan: that is, to call the two souls of the mystical body of the Church, so well symbolised by the harmony of the rose.