Salus populi: Icons and the Protection of the People

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic, Pope Francis prayed before an icon of the Virgin and Child in Santa Maria Maggiore and a crucifix in San Marcello, two images associated with miraculous healing and intercessory power. He subsequently had the icon and crucifix moved to St. Peter’s where they flanked the pope as he offered a special Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27, 2020. To contextualize Francis’s use of an icon during the coronavirus outbreak, this article will trace the role of cult images in Rome during occurrences of disease and will briefly discuss the specific importance of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon for the early Jesuit order.

Francis's willingness to venture outside the confines of the Vatican and break with the national Italian lockdown to pray before the venerable icon and crucifix illustrates the power of cult images during times of distress. In the medieval and early modern periods, icons were particularly associated with apotropaic powers because of their perceived success during earlier, difficult times, as detailed in legendary accounts. This article will discuss how specific images in Rome came to be associated with the power to protect and heal; although icons were used in a variety of ways-to gain protection from invaders, to celebrate annual liturgical feasts such as that of the Assumption, or to demonstrate personal devotion-this article will focus on times of illness as a way to understand Francis's noteworthy visits to Santa Maria Maggiore and San Marcello. 4 Francis's special devotion to the Marian icon in Santa Maria Maggiore will further be considered in relation to the particular role that the image has played for the Jesuit order, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such an examination of icons in Rome will illustrate the long-standing tradition of invoking those cult images during times of suffering or uncertainty, the hoped-for deliverance from outbreaks of disease that the Virgin Mary was believed to offer, and the continuing relevance of icons during the contemporary global pandemic.

The Queen of Heaven: Protecting Rome in the Time of Plague
While it is unknown when icons were first used in penitential processions meant to solicit God's mercy during times of contagion, legends developed that describe Pope Gregory's (590-604) processional use of Marian icons during a late sixth-century plague in Rome. By early 590 the city had been devastated by floods, Pope Pelagius II (579-590) had succumbed to the plague, and citizens were fearful for their own lives. To solicit the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the newly elected pope, Gregory I (later known as Gregory the Great), organized a seven-part processionthe letania septiformis. 5 Residents of the entire city, regardless of economic, social, or political standing, gathered in seven groups to depart from seven churches and process simultaneously to meet at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. By the ninth century, Gregory's letania septiformis was conflated with the letania maior, a procession that went from San Lorenzo in Lucina to the church of St. Peter. 6 In the first half of the thirteenth century, the legend of Gregory the Great's procession was modified further, as detailed in the Liber Epilogorum (c. 1236) of Bartholomew of Trent: as the procession approached the ancient tomb of Hadrian on the way to St. Peter's, the archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum; sheathing his blood-stained sword, he indicated the end of the plague that had taken the lives of many Romans. 7 In his description of the procession in the Legenda aurea (c. 1270), Jacobus de Voragine mentions for the first time the inclusion of a Marian image: as it was carried towards Hadrian's mausoleum, the turbulent air of the city was purified, angels appeared singing the hymn of Regina Coeli, and the archangel sheathed his sword above the ancient tomb, which was thereafter known as Castel Sant'Angelo, the Castle of the Angel. 8 The Legenda aurea further associates the Marian image with the hand of the Evangelist St. Luke, who was believed to have painted the portrait directly from life. Icons associated with St. Luke, often completed through miraculous means, were considered authentic and true portraits of the Virgin and Christ. 9 The venerable association with Luke as well as the prestige associated with helping to protect and heal the city of Rome during contagion encouraged a competition among Marian icons -and the communities that supported them.
An icon's association with Gregory's legendary procession was important both spiritually and economically, for that image had potential thaumaturgic power for future contagions, thus increasing pilgrim traffic and donations through the icon's perceived ability to heal. The proliferation of icon copies, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, led to a further competition among cult images; the promotion of an icon's divine origin and legendary history helped to proclaim and substantiate that representation's power. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the late Middle Ages several icons in Rome were associated with stopping the sixth-century plague. 10 The most important of these images was the Marian icon from Santa Maria Maggiore ( fig. 3), an icon that had a special status through its association with the Esquiline basilica, the first Roman church dedicated to Mary. According to legend, the Virgin caused snow to miraculously fall on the Esquiline Hill on August 5, leading to the foundation of the basilica at that site under Pope Liberius (352-366). 11 The Santa Maria Maggiore icon also appeared in the yearly Assumption festivities (August 15), during which the miraculous icon of Christ, contained in the Sancta Sanctorum of the Lateran Palace, was processed through the city streets to arrive at dawn at Santa Maria Maggiore, where the Son encountered his Mother. 12 In relation to the icon's believed intercessory power, Guillaume Durand indicated that the cult image had been carried in Gregory's procession and was responsible for clearing the infected and turbulent air; according to Durand's Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (c. 1286), three angels sang Regina coeli laetare alleluia, and following a prayer by the pope, the archangel appeared above Hadrian's tomb and indicated the cessation of the plague. 13 Even if an icon was not directly associated with Gregory's famous procession, its power could still be validated through its use in subsequent plague outbreaks, as was the case with the Marian icon in Santa Maria del Popolo ( fig. 4). In 1231, Gregory IX (1227-1241), along with cardinals and the Roman people, conducted a public procession with that icon in order to request God's intervention during a great pestilence that had ravaged the city. 14 Following the Virgin's intercession and the elimination of the plague, the icon was placed on the high altar of Santa Maria del Popolo where it continued to perform miracles and was increasingly associated with indulgences. 15 The increasing importance of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century may have inspired revisions in the Gregory plague legend, as other Marian icons laid claim to the apotropaic powers associated with that pope's procession. 16 In his early fourteenth-century Historia ecclesiastica nova, Ptolemy of Lucca credits the image known as the San Sisto icon (fig. 5) with helping to purify Rome's poor air quality and, following its arrival at Hadrian's tomb, with ending the sixth-century pestilence in the city. 17 The San Sisto icon, a representation of the intercessory Virgin or Madonna advocata, had a venerable history in Rome stemming back to at least the ninth century. The location of the image within the cloistered space of a Dominican female religious community on the Via Appia from 1221 on likely limited its circulation; the more controlled access to the icon may have caused other cult images in Rome to increase in popularity. 18 For example, a copy of the San Sisto icon housed in the Franciscan church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill in the center of Rome quickly began to eclipse the fame of its model ( fig. 6). The Aracoeli icon was also associated with the Gregory procession, perhaps already by the late thirteenth century, when the Franciscan pope, Nicholas III (1277-1280), is credited with sponsoring the construction and decoration of a chapel at Castel Sant'Angelo to honor the archangel. There, according to an anonymous source in the fifteenth century, frescoes illustrated the events of Gregory's procession and included an inscription naming the icon as that from Santa Maria in Aracoeli. 19 While early textual sources related to the Aracoeli icon date primarily to the second half of the fourteenth century, its power as an advocate for the Roman people was recognized by Cola di Rienzo in 1347 and reconfirmed during the plague of 1348. 20 Cola di Rienzo, crowned as Tribune in Santa Maria Maggiore in November 1347 after a victory over the Colonna family, went to the Capitoline basilica where he offered his staff, crown, and olive branches to the church's icon in recognition of the Virgin's power to protect the Roman citizens. 21 In the following year, when the Black Death ravaged Rome, the Marian icon was taken through the city streets in a ceremony that would have recalled Pope Gregory's procession. The perceived thaumaturgic power of the Aracoeli icon had an immediate economic effect for the Capitoline basilica. Five thousand florins offered as alms to the image by the Roman people financed the construction of the staircase leading to the west facade of the church. That staircase, started on October 25, 1348 as indicated in an inscription on the building's facade, served as a monumental ex-voto and provided a grand entrance to the church, which had previously been accessed primarily from the Piazza del Campidoglio through a southern door. 22 Although the ex-voto staircase leading to Santa Maria in Aracoeli would have been a visible reminder of the efficacious protection of that church's icon during the fourteenth-century plague outbreak, the competition among Marian cult images in Rome did not diminish. An icon's association with healing-most frequently linked to the Gregory legend-would have potentially offered financial and spiritual benefits for the community caring for that image. In this way, it is not surprising that the Marian image used by Gregory continued to be a point of debate. For example, Fra Mariano of Florence summarized the conflicting opinions related to the specific image that participated in Gregory's procession in his Itinerarium urbis Romae (1517) and offered evidence to support the icon of the Virgin found in Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Mariano noted that the canons of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Dominicans of San Sisto similarly claimed that their icons of the Virgin had been taken in procession by Pope Gregory. 23 Although Mariano, as a Brother Minor who stayed with the Franciscans at Santa Maria in Aracoeli during his time in Rome, demonstrates a bias towards the Capitoline basilica and its holy image, he states that "God alone knows which is the true icon." 24 A marble disc contained in Santa Maria in Aracoeli, however, was believed to display the footprints of the archangel Michael, which miraculously were impressed by the ethereal being at the time of his appearance to Pope Gregory. 25 The presence of that miraculous relic in the Franciscan basilica offered indisputable proof for Mariano that the Santa Maria in Aracoeli icon was crucial in protecting the city during the sixth-century plague.
The Italian peninsula continued to be assailed by various contagions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and, as before, various icons in the city were associated with the power to heal. 26 As evidence of the continued faith placed in an icon's potential for miraculous intervention, Sixtus IV (1471-1484) celebrated the Mass and offered supplications and prayers before the Marian icon in Santa Maria del Popolo when deadly fevers caused the deaths of many in Rome; following the pope's visit, the city's air quality immediately improved and the sick were healed. 27 During a particularly bad outbreak of the plague in Rome in 1485, Innocent VIII (1484-1492) took an icon from the church of Sant'Agostino to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli on August 1. Over the next three days, the icon passed from San Pietro to Santi Dodici Apostoli, San Silvestro in Capite, San Lorenzo in Lucina, and Santi Celso e Giuliano. 28 Following those stops, the icon continued its journey, passing from church to church throughout the various rioni (districts) of Rome with the devotion, fervor, and number of the faithful increasing daily. By the time of the feast of the Assumption on August 15, the icon had arrived at St. Peter's, where solemn celebrations continued to bestow great honor on the Virgin. On August 21, the image left Saint Peter's to be taken to the Pigna neighborhood and was accompanied with great reverence by clerics, confraternities, magistrates, and the caporioni, the official leaders of Rome's districts. Stopping in Santa Maria ad Martyres (the Pantheon), the Virgin was proclaimed the "Liberatrice di Roma, Maria Vergine delle Vergini, e Madre di tutti" (Liberator of Rome, Mary Virgin of Virgins, and Mother of all) and the icon was subsequently returned to its home in Sant'Agostino. 29 In thanks for the Virgin's intercession and the halting of the plague, the icon was placed in a new, marble relief frame. 30 In the context of the Catholic Reformation in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a proliferation of guides to Rome, catalogues of Marian images, and focused histories of specific icons reinforced the sacred topography of the city and documented the use and continuing relevance of cult images. 31 In these texts, the venerable origins of icons, which were often associated with the hand of St. Luke and miraculous intervention, as well as the power of miracle-working images to heal and protect helped to establish Mary as the pre-eminent intercessor while responding to Protestant criticism of the cult of images and the cult of the Virgin. For example, the Jesuit Peter Canisius (1521-1597) in his De Maria Virgine incomparabili (1577) recorded that the icon of Santa Maria Maggiore had, in the past, answered prayers and conquered pestilence, such as the plague during the pontificate of Gregory the Great. 32 In the context of the Catholic Reformation, when Mary's efficacy as an intercessor and the value of icons were challenged by Protestants, such an account traced the long-standing history of the image in Rome, provided evidence for its apotropaic power, and supported its devotional use in the present, for the icon's previous miraculous performance was a manifestation of its divine power. 33 Sources dating to the post-Tridentine period continued to suggest that multiple Marian icons were carried during Gregory's sixth-century procession, allowing the credit for saving the city to be shared among various images and their respective communities. For example, according to Ottavio Panciroli (1554-1624) and Andrea Vittorelli (1580-1653), in addition to the icon of Santa Maria Maggiore, other Marian images such as those from Santa Maria in Aracoeli and Santa Maria in Portico had also accompanied the procession. 34 Texts written by Fioravante Martinelli (1599-1677) and Francesco Maria Torrigio (1580-1649) on the history of the San Sisto icon instead claim that image's participation in helping to save Rome from the sixth-century plague. 35 Although demonstrating the historic and cult significance of Marian images in Rome, the texts by Panciroli, Vittorelli, Martinelli, and Torrigio served various purposes. The antiquarian Panciroli provided general descriptions of the "sacred treasures" of the city in his devotional guidebook to Rome. 36 The theologian Vittorelli instead focused on the Pauline Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, which was completed three years prior to the publication of his text and housed the church's Marian icon at its ritual center. 37 The texts by Martinelli and Torrigio, monographs on the San Sisto icon, demonstrate an interest in documenting that cult image through a careful analysis of historical texts. 38 All the texts, nonetheless, reinforced the sacred nature of Rome and the prestige of the religious communities and churches that housed and cared for miracle-working cult images.
Although the often competing narratives related to the miracle-working activities of Marian images reaffirmed that various Roman icons had the potential to defend against contagion, the promotion of those cult images during periods of outbreak could also increase the risk of further spreading disease. Crowded displays of devotion developed a tension between the protective and healing power of the cult image and the inherent risks to public health that communal displays of popular piety might create. In the seventeenth century, such gatherings defied contemporary quarantines and plague-time city ordinances and necessitated restrictions on processions, the display of miracle-working cult images, and church access, as was the case during the devastating plague that ravaged Rome in 1656-1657 under Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667). 39 Church authorities were clearly aware of these competing imperatives: out of an attempt to reduce the mixing of the healthy and the sick, the pope placed limitations on visits to a Marian icon conserved in the church of San Gregorio. He additionally had a private cult image that was controlled by the Boncompagni family moved to San Paolo fuori le Mura, where the number of visitors was lower due to the more remote location outside the city walls. 40 Even with these attempts to suppress the crowds that cult images attracted, and to manage the related possible danger to public health, the perceived power of icons to potentially heal the city nonetheless continued in 1656, as seen with the propagandistic promotion of a champlevé image of the Virgin and Child from Santa Maria in Portico. According to Vittorelli, the image not only had been carried during the procession of Gregory, but also had been taken through the city during other contagions at the time of Popes Callistus III (1455-1458) and Hadrian VI (1522-1523); piously processed through Rome, the image was able to liberate the city from the "fatal scourge" and "deadly contagion." 41 In 1656, the Clerics Regular of Santa Maria in Portico promoted the church's feast day celebration on July 17 by circulating leaflets that described earlier miracles performed by the image as a way of demonstrating its ability to protect the city from the contemporary plague. 42 The increasing popularity of the icon inspired great crowds of pious visi-tors, which necessitated an armed guard to maintain order, and eventually led to the enforced closure of the church to stem the further spread of disease. The Roman Senate strategically requested permission from Alexander VII to offer a vow for the construction of a new church to honor the image and provide thanks for the Virgin's intercession and the end of the plague. 43 That new church, Santa Maria in Campitelli, was designed by Carlo Rainaldi (1611-1691) with a high altar by Giovanni Antonio de Rossi (1616-1695) ( fig. 7); as suggested by Sheila Barker, the architecture of the ecclesiastical space and the display of the reframed Marian image directly addressed concerns related to "social distancing" and sanitization that would help to neutralize the air-borne plague. 44 Specifically, the light-filled sanctuary, the white plaster walls and ceilings, and the particular display of the Marian icon-best appreciated close to the entrance to the church-were believed to help diminish the spread of disease and limit crowding around the cult image.

Urbi et Orbi: The Santa Maria Maggiore Icon, the Jesuits, and COVID-19
Although numerous icons and cult images in Rome have historically been associated with the power to heal, Pope Francis has shown special devotion to the icon of the Virgin and Child currently contained in the Pauline Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore. In this way, Francis has not only followed in a tradition of popes like Gregory the Great, but has also reflected the longstanding Jesuit dedication to this particular Marian image. By reproducing and distributing copies of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon, the Jesuits helped to disseminate an image that had been associated with propitiatory processions in Rome and had played an important role in the Assumption procession.
The Assumption procession, the most significant Roman civic-religious celebration, took place annually from the ninth century until 1566. 45 From the late medieval period, the Assumption procession was overseen primarily by civic officials, the Confraternity of the Salvatore, the Con- fraternity of the Raccomandati (later Gonfalone), and private citizens; the pope, when he participated in the ceremony, would celebrate Mass in Santa Maria Maggiore. After the all-night procession and the arrival of the Lateran icon of Christ at the Esquiline basilica, the Marian icon was transported from its tabernacle in Santa Maria Maggiore to the piazza in front of the church where Mother and Son greeted one another as the images ceremonially "bowed." 46 By the mid-sixteenth century, the nocturnal Assumption celebration was increasingly characterized by violent incidents and disagreements between the Confraternity of the Salvatore and the Lateran canons, which likely contributed to Pius V's (1566-1572) decision to cancel the annual procession in 1566. By the end of the sixteenth century, further restrictions were placed on the Santa Maria Maggiore icon, as demonstrated in 1597 when Clement VIII confirmed that "the icon cannot be removed from, and must always remain in, S. Maria Maggiore, in the care of the canons and the Confraternity of the Gonfalone." 47 By 1613, however, the icon was transferred to a tabernacle in Paul V's newly constructed funerary chapel, where its access was controlled by papal keys, rather than the confraternal brothers or the Roman people. 48 Although the Santa Maria Maggiore icon's movement was increasingly restricted from the second half of the sixteenth century, copies-frequently sponsored by the Jesuits-helped to circulate the Marian image far beyond the confines of Rome to a more global context. Francis Borgia (1510-72), the third general of the Jesuit order from 1565 to 1572, initiated a campaign to reproduce the icon with the purpose of using those copies as missionary tools and as instruments of propaganda in the fight against the Protestants. 49 With Pius V's permission in 1569, the icon was copied and had a widespread and immediate distribution to Jesuit educational institutions; to missionaries traveling as far as South America, Africa, and China; and to numerous crowned heads and high-ranking ecclesiastics across Europe who received the reproductions as diplomatic gifts. 50 Based on the Roman original in Santa Maria Maggiore that was believed to have been painted by the Evangelist Luke, the reproductions were valued as true portraits of the Virgin and sometimes became images worthy of special honor and veneration, as was the case with a copy sent to the first Jesuit college in Germany located in Ingolstadt. 51 While copies of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon were distributed globally, the original in Rome only infrequently left its chapel in the Esquiline basilica. The extensive copying and global dispersion of reproductions of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon, especially by the Jesuits, spread the international fame of the Marian image at the same time that the original in Rome was hidden from public view.
The fact that the rare public appearances of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon were linked to the earlier tradition of plague processions is, therefore, significant. In the context of the modern period and the advent of a rational scientific age, such displays demonstrate the survival of religious beliefs, popular piety, and the tradition of propitiatory processions. More than two centuries after the icon had been transferred to and enclosed within the Pauline Chapel, the cult image was removed from the basilica to take part in processions related to the outbreaks of cholera in 1835, when the disease entered the Italian peninsula, and in 1837, when it arrived in Rome. 52 The cholera processions not only mark the first time in over two hundred years that the icon had been removed from Santa Maria Maggiore, but also demonstrate a new negotiation of technology, public health, and devotional practice. This can be seen by comparing how the 1835 and 1837 processions were handled. In 1835, Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) ordered a processional itinerary intended to evoke the sixth-century procession of his papal namesake, Gregory the Great: the Marian icon was taken from the Esquiline basilica through the streets of Rome until a torrential downpour necessitated a stop at the Chiesa Nuova, where the icon remained for seven days prior to proceeding towards Castel Sant'Angelo and St. Peter's. 53 The path of the procession linked various sites of Marian devotion in the city and led to reports of numerous miracles performed by other images of the Virgin. When cases of cholera appeared in Rome in 1837, especially in the Borgo and Trastevere, the icon was again borne in procession, but this time followed a route that avoided the more afflicted regions of the city by the Tiber River in favor of less densely populated neighborhoods. In this way, a concern for public health and contemporary theories of disease transmission prompted adjustments to the traditional processional path to St. Peter's that had been used in 1835. The celebration of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon, as well as smaller processions of other Marian images through well-illuminated streets, nonetheless reaffirmed the salvific power of the Virgin Mary while also asserting the authority of the pope. 54 Although alterations in the two propitiatory processions of 1835 and 1837 took into account the changing conditions of the cholera outbreak in Rome, the presence of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon on both occasions would have evoked devotional displays associated with the medieval Church. Gregory XVI's appeal to the thaumaturgic power of the Marian cult image is characteristic of the more conservative and traditionalist approach of his pontificate and reflects the continuing significance of popular piety in the modern period. The direct participation of Gregory XVI in the processions would have additionally reinforced the spiritual and political authority of the papacy in relation to devotional practice. 55 Following the cholera procession of 1837, the Santa Maria Maggiore icon remained within the Pauline Chapel for nearly the next one hundred years, a period when the Church in Rome strove for a careful balance of scholarship, ecclesiastical authority, and rationalist thought. In the nineteenth century, devotional images, street shrines, and other objects of popular devotion were sometimes sacrificed in favor of civic modernization. 56 Discrepancies between Christian theology and new advances in science and philosophy furthermore led to an increased questioning of Church doctrine. The response of the papacy, as demonstrated in encyclicals like Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus (1893), was to defend the infallibility of scripture. 57 At the same time, the papacy encouraged critical investigation and the documentation of early Christianity and medieval history by opening the Vatican Archives in 1881; through archaeological research, such as the catacomb exploration of Giovanni de Rossi (1822-1894); and in the documentation of relics and holy objects, like those in the Sancta Sanctorum. 58 In this environment characterized by a historical analysis of the Christian past coupled with fears of modernism, images like the Santa Maria Maggiore icon continued to offer solace, as demonstrated in the title granted to the image in 1870: Salus Populi Romani, the Salvation [or Health] of the Roman People. 59 Underscoring both the historic and continuing communal significance of the image, the Salus Populi Romani title associates the image with the security, safety, and wellbeing of the city and its citizens from both a religious and a political perspective. 60 With the formation of the Italian state in 1870 and the withdrawal of the pope to the Vatican, the promise of safety and security would have certainly been sought by the papacy, especially as the rights of the pope and the ownership of cultural patrimony in Italy were questioned.
Following the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which established papal sovereignty over the Vatican and papal control of extraterritorial property including Santa Maria Maggiore, the icon of the Esquiline basilica received renewed attention, primarily as part of Marian celebrations. The image was restored in 1931 and processed on May 10 of the same year in honor of the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus. 61 The image was again taken in procession from Santa Maria Maggiore to St. Peter's at the conclusion of the "Crusade for a Better World" on December 8, 1949 and at the proclamation of the Dogma of the Assumption on November 1, 1950, both under Pius XII (1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945)(1946)(1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958). 62 The icon also played an important role during the papally proclaimed international Marian years of 1953-1954 and 1987-1988; it was during these celebrations that popular devotion was shown to the Virgin through religious processions and pilgrimage to Marian sanctuaries. 63  In more recent years, Francis, like many previous popes, has promoted Marian devotion through feast day celebrations, pilgrimage, Apostolic Blessings, and special Masses in honor of the Virgin. 66 The first Jesuit pope has, however, shown particular devotion to the Santa Maria Maggiore icon since the start of his pontificate, reflecting his order's longstanding veneration for that image. Francis has visited and prayed before the icon in Santa Maria Maggiore on numerous occasions, including his first public excursion as pontiff on March 14, 2013, a day after his election as pope. 67 On September 7, 2013, Francis had the icon brought to St. Peter's and processed by four Swiss guards through the square as part of a prayer vigil for the safeguarding of the people of Syria and those threatened by violence throughout the world. 68 Before and after international apostolic visits, Francis has prayed before the icon in Santa Maria Maggiore, as he has done prior to traveling to Georgia, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Mauritius and following trips to destinations such as Morocco and Romania. According to the Holy See Press Office, Francis prays before the Marian icon to "[invoke] the Virgin Mary's protection on his travels and upon the people he will visit in the country." 69 In 2017, the Vatican Museums restored the icon, returning the image to the Pauline Chapel where Francis celebrated Mass on January 28, 2018, a day that marked the feast celebration of the icon's translation to the chapel in 1613. 70 While crediting the Vatican restorers, Father Raymond J. de Souza noted that, "in truth, it is the Holy Father himself who has restored Salus Populi Romani to prominence in Rome. Its artistic restoration followed a devotional resurgence led by Pope Francis, beginning on his first full day as pope." 71 Given Francis's special interest in the image combined with its historic association with healing during times of contagion, it is not surprising that the pope would turn to the Santa Maria Maggiore icon at the outbreak of COVID-19. With the increasing threat of the coronavirus and the limitations of movement placed on 60 million Italians announced by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti on March 8, 2020, the icon in Santa Maria Maggiore, along with the miraculous crucifix in San Marcello, was invoked by Francis for its propitiatory power. On March 15, Francis conducted a "mini-pilgrimage," traveling by car from the Vatican to Santa Maria Maggiore, where he spent twenty minutes in prayer before the basilica's Marian icon (see fig. 1). 72 From the Esquiline Hill, Francis then went to San Marcello where he prayed in front of the miraculous wooden crucifix that was credited with saving Rome from a plague in 1522. A photo, showing the pope before the icon of the Virgin and Child with the accompanying hashtag "#praytogether," publicized Francis's visit to Santa Maria Maggiore on his papal Instagram account to 6.6 million followers. Other photographs, released by Vatican Media and widely distributed on Twitter, capture Francis's solitary approach to San Marcello, depicting the pope walking along the empty Via del Corso at the heart of a locked-down city center (see fig. 2). 73 Peter's basilica; broadcast via Facebook, YouTube, television, and radio, the blessing normally reserved for Christmas Day and Easter Sunday directly addressed concerns over the spread of COVID-19. 74 The icon of Santa Maria Maggiore and the crucifix from San Marcello, removed from their chapels and brought to St. Peter's for that service, flanked the pope as he offered prayers outside the basilica and a blessing Urbi et Orbi -"to the city and the world" (fig. 8). 75 A plenary indulgence was "granted to the faithful suffering from COVID-19 disease . . . as well as to health care workers, family members, and all those who in any capacity, including through prayer, care for them." 76 Given the conditions of quarantine, the faithful could "unite spiritually through the media" in order to fulfill the specific conditions for the granting of the plenary indulgence.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has necessitated a widespread adoption of social network platforms and new media resources to connect with the faithful who have been isolated through social distancing, lockdowns, and quarantine. The Vatican has adjusted to the circumstances of the coronavirus: through live-streamed Easter Triduum liturgies offered inside an empty St. Peter's basilica; through an Exceptional Plenary Indulgence granted for a virtual pilgrimage to Lourdes conducted "via broadcast, live-stream, recorded television or radio program"; through the promotion of a "virtual parish" with a daily Mass broadcast on Facebook and YouTube that is celebrated by the pope in an empty chapel; or through the recitation of the Angelus prayer through video conferencing. 77 Just as the Jesuits used the printing press during the Catholic Reformation in the sixteenth century to support a global distribution of copies of devotional images, televised and livestreaming displays today provide an instantaneous dissemination of sacred art at a time when visiting cult centers in person may be impossible. 78 The prominent display and promotion of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon and the crucifix of San Marcello, two representations historically associated with miraculous healing, demonstrate the continuing significance and sacred power associated with devotional images during the coronavirus pandemic. The pope's use of these images as well as their online and televised distribution through the Holy See's national broadcaster, Vatican Media, have underscored their authority, legitimacy, and historic resonance. 79 At a time when new technology is being promoted to overcome social distance and to address devotional needs, images long associated with the miraculous eradication of disease continue to play a central role for the salus populi-for the welfare of the people.