Pope Francis has made universal the 10 December local feast day called Our Lady of Loreto.

If we are beginning to think in real time for Christmas then this feast is useful as we can look back nine months to March. This is when Mary heard from the angel that she was pregnant with the child she was to call Jesus.

This took place at her home in Nazareth which was a cave with a stone frontage. That ‘front room’ was moved in 1294 to the hill-top town in Italy called Loreto.

Suggestions that the Holy House was carried by angels has given rise to lovely iconography as seen above.

The footprint of the house now at Loreto can be seen inside Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation covering the original site.

The Holy House at Loreto is also protected by being within a church.

Loreto has another Christmas connection for buried behind the Holy House is Richard Crashaw, priest at Little St Mary’s Cambridge, who in 1648 wrote the carol Gloomy Night.

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