HAPEVILLE--The Redemptorist priests at St. John the Evangelist Parish will solemnly enthrone the order's picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Saturday, March 9, at 8:30 a.m. Mass. A perpetual novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help will begin at that time and continue each Saturday morning indefinitely.

The picture will be enthroned to the side of the main altar at St. John's Parish and will be brought forward for devotions.

The devotion will be 130 years old on April 28, but the history of the original icon is centuries older. The icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help arrived in Europe in the late 15th century. Its origins are unknown, but it had been venerated in Crete before arriving in Rome.

It was the property of a private family until the youngest child was instructed during a Marian apparition that the picture was to be placed in St. Matthew's Church, between the basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran in Rome.

The icon was exposed for veneration at St. Matthew's on March 27, 1499. It remained there until the church was destroyed during a war in 1798. The Augustinian Fathers were able to save the icon and move it to another church.

One of the last Augustinians to be professed in St. Matthew's before its destruction was Brother Augustine Orsetti. A frequent visitor of his, Michael Marchi, heard the story of the icon regularly from the aging Augustinian. Marchi later became a Redemptorist priest and he remembered the icon's history of miracles.

In 1855 the Redemptorists came to Rome, building a church in honor of their founder, St. Alphonsus, on the site St. Matthew's had occupied. Father Marchi encouraged his order to petition Pope Pius IX to restore the icon to its 15th century site, the one Mary had requested, which was now named for one of her greatest defenders.

On April 26, 1866, the icon was carried in procession to the church of St. Alphonsus, where it remains today.

Replicas of the icon have been widely distributed and the devotion encouraged because Pope Pius IX also commanded the Redemptorists to make Our Lady of Perpetual Help known all over the world.

The Redemptorist priests at St. John are glad to start the devotion at the parish and anticipate many intercessions by Mary to her son Jesus on behalf of parishioners and others who share the novena.