In a recent issue of the Italian weekly magazine Maria con te (“Mary with You”), we find a sober but intense interview with singer and actress Romina Power, focusing on her great devotion to Our Lady.
Romina Power: Marriage to Albano Carrisi and the birth of 4 children
Romina Power—famous singer, actress and TV personality, and the daughter of two great Hollywood stars, Tyrone Power and Linda Christian—turned 70 this past October. She came to the forefront on July 26, 1970, when, at just over 18 years of age, she married a young and promising Italian singer, Albano Carrisi, the son of Apulian peasants.
Marrying Romina Power, a decision initially not approved by his mother, turned out for the best: their relationship was deep and happy both as a married couple and as an artistic duo, and four children were born from the marriage: Ylenia, Yari, Cristel and Romina.
Ylenia’s disappearance
Although for decades the couple were admired for their harmony in life and at work, they separated in 1999 and eventually divorced in 2012, spurred in part by the trauma of the mysterious disappearance of their first daughter Ylenia at the age of 23 in New Orleans in 1994. Her body has never been found.
In relation to this terrible suffering, while her father is now convinced she committed suicide by drowning in the Mississippi River, Romina continues to believe that her daughter is still alive and hiding somewhere.
After her daughter’s disappearance, she could only fall asleep if she prayed the Rosary
The singer tells Maria con te how her family, half of Mexican origin on her mother’s side, was devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and how close she felt to Mary at that dramatic moment:
I turned to Our Lady in 1994, after the disappearance of my daughter Ylenia. I was lost and couldn’t find complete answers anywhere. I couldn’t even sleep. So I went to a monastery in New Orleans and asked them if they had a rosary. They pointed to a large stack of colorful plastic rosaries. I picked one out. Reciting it, then, I finally found peace that would allow me to sleep, as well as the certainty that, in the end, all will be well. That good overcomes evil. All the time.
Thanks to rediscovering inner peace, Romina was able to resume the path of her life, reconciling with Albano and resuming a strictly artistic partnership with him.
Romina Power’s devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe
She continues to be deeply attached to the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, but she discovered with her sister Taryn that in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where she used to live, there’s another shrine dedicated to that apparition of Our Lady. She went there to pray three years ago when visiting her sister Taryn (who died of leukemia in 2020).
Painting Mary with the Christ Child
Romina Power is also a painter, and on multiple occasions she has painted the Blessed Mother, always with the Child Jesus: “There was a period when I painted only Madonnas,” she told the Italian weekly, driven by “that sense of peace and serenity that she instills.” She describes to the reporter how she portrays her:
I wanted her sweetness to shine. But also her resignation to her destiny, the destiny of her son. I feel her as the Mother of all of us, not only of Jesus. And who loves her children and listens to them more than a mother does?
When St. John Paul II kissed Romina on her forehead
She doesn’t know Pope Francis well, but she had a special bond with St. John Paul II, as she revealed in the interview:
Fifteen years before I met him personally, I dreamed of walking and talking with him. He gave me Communion three times. When I approached him on the stage of the Maracana stadium and, according to protocol, bent down to kiss his ring, he took my head and kissed me on the forehead instead.
We must be the guardians of the earth
When asked about the serious ecological problems that increasingly threaten humanity today and about her hopes for humanity, she says, “In my opinion, if we want the human race to continue to populate the Earth, we have to look inward, discover the reserves of spirituality we have and become custodians of the earth rather than exploiters.”
I hope my grandchildren help make the world a better place
In this perspective, when asked what she hopes for her three grandchildren, Romina told the Italian publication, “What every mother and grandmother in this world wishes: may they have a peaceful life, may they find their way in the world and contribute to improving it, even if only slightly.”
And today we celebrate...