San Gennaro, miracle in Milan: relatives are also away

Miracle again in Milan, and it is not a remake of Vittorio De Sica’s film. It is the most famous, that of San Gennaro: from tomorrow his “relatives”, the group of devotees who incite the patron of Naples to melt the blood, will be able to count on a Milanese branch, a Milanese cell that prays with them. He gathered them Bianca Carrescia57 years old, Neapolitan who for years has moved under the Madunina but has never left the cult for the saint: “For reasons of work and family I will not be able to be in Naples, so I organized a prayer session to join my relatives remotely, we participate in the live Facebook, ”she explains.


It is a story born before the pandemic. La Carrescia, an elementary school teacher, turned to Paolo Iorio, director of the museum of the treasure of San Gennaro, to get in touch with the relatives of Yellow Face. For the uninitiated, legend has it that they descend from Eusebia, the saint’s nurse, the same one who collected the martyr’s famous blood in two ampoules after her beheading. An offspring without a real but symbolic family tree, and which has a specific task: to exhort the saint to perform the miracle with prayers, invocations and even “colorful exhortations”, as Matilde Serao wrote: “San Gennà scetati, do us a miracle! », And the well-known« Yellow face, please us! » .

Currently the group of these ultras, the ladies who can boast the official title of relatives, is made up of about ten devotees, strictly women and aged 65 and over. La Carrescia has begun to frequent them and they, close relatives, have adopted it a bit, allowing her when she is in the city to stay close to the reserved area during the miracles: “I made a request to Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, the abbot of the chapel who dispenses the certificates of kinship officers. I’m technically an aspiring relative, like a cousin in law, then he’ll decide if I deserve the honor. ” Who is he? The monsignor? “No, the saint.”

While waiting to be welcomed into the “family”, Carrescia has decided to spread the creed also in Milan, organizing a cult branch with Neapolitans and non-Neapolitans: it meets in a small church in the Lombard capital on the three canonical dates, that is the Saturday that precedes the first Sunday of May, September 19, or tomorrow, and December 16: «San Gennaro is a citizen saint, who comes down from the pedestal, a sacred figure of which, in fact, one can become relatives. Unique in the world, it was not difficult to involve even those who were not used to believing in him by territorial tradition, like me », she continues, but she is not a beguine in a black veil and a fanatic attitude. La Carrescia is married, has two children, lives a normal life: «I’m anything but a bigot. I have the saint with me in my heart, as a friend. And I like, through such an easygoing and popular cult, to make as many people as possible understand the meaning of spirituality in general ». Are you aiming for a widening of relationships? “No, I really respect officialdom. But I’m sure that my attention, if not my question, will please him very much, he is not the type to formalize himself ».

San Gennaro, miracle in Milan: relatives are also away