While many saints stayed faithful to God throughout their entire lives, Bl. Bartolo Longo went in the exact opposite direction.
In fact, it would appear that he went as far away from God as a person can get by being "ordained" a Satanic priest.
This involved leading séances, experimenting with drugs, and even getting involved in orgies.
Then one night he heard the voice of his dead father crying out to him, “Return to God!”
This lead him on a journey back to the Catholic Church, holding fast to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Pope Francis recently approved his cause for canonization, which will lead him to become recognized as a "saint."
Apostle of the Rosary
Meg Hunter-Kilmer explains in an article for Aleteia how, "cleansed and consecrated, Bartolo visited one last séance. He walked in, held up a rosary and called out, 'I renounce spiritualism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood.'"
Longo joined the Dominicans and took as his name Brother Rosario (Brother Rosary.)
Pope Benedict XVI praised Longo for his devotion to the Rosary in a visit to Pompeii in 2008:
Before entering the Shrine to recite the Holy Rosary with you, I paused briefly before the tomb of Bl. Bartolo Longo and, praying, I asked myself: "Where did this great apostle of Mary find the energy and perseverance he needed to bring such an impressive work, now known across the world, to completion? Was it not in the Rosary, which he accepted as a true gift from Our Lady's Heart?" Yes, that truly was how it happened!
Longo loved the Rosary, but he saw it as more of a conversation with Mary than a long list of prayers.
Pope Benedict XVI explains how Longo viewed the Rosary:
In this regard, I would like to quote a beautiful thought of Bl. Bartolo Longo: "Just as two friends, frequently in each other's company, tend to develop similar habits", he wrote, "so too, by holding familiar converse with Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, by meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary and by living the same life in Holy Communion, we can become, to the extent of our lowliness, similar to them and can learn from these supreme models a life of humility, poverty, hiddenness, patience and perfection."
Bl. Bartolo Longo may have fallen away from Mary early in life, but he eventually ran with his full force back into her loving arms, never leaving them for the rest of his life.
