Feast day: May 24

Our Lady Help of Christians

Marian Feast

Patron of Australia, families

A title of Mary as protector of the Christian people in times of danger, promoted especially by St. John Bosco and honored as patroness of Australia.

The title 'Help of Christians' honors Mary as the protector and defender of the Christian people in times of danger and trial, who comes to the aid of her children and of the whole Church when they turn to her. It is an ancient invocation — found among Mary's titles in the Litany of Loreto — that gathered new meaning at several great moments when Christians believed her intercession had delivered them.

The feast itself, kept on May 24, was established by Pope Pius VII in thanksgiving for his own deliverance. Held captive for years by the Emperor Napoleon, who had stripped him of his freedom and his city, the pope was at last released and returned to Rome in 1814 — and he attributed his liberation and the restoration of the Church to the help of the Blessed Virgin, instituting this feast in her honor.

The devotion found a great champion in St. John Bosco, the apostle of poor and abandoned youth in nineteenth-century Turin. He took 'Mary, Help of Christians' as the special patroness of his work and of his Salesian congregation, and built in her honor a great basilica in Turin, declaring that every grace and every brick of it came through her hands.

Carried by the Salesians and other missionaries across the world, the title became especially beloved in many lands, and Mary, Help of Christians, was chosen as the principal patroness of Australia. The feast celebrates the confidence of the faithful that, in every age and danger, they have in Mary a powerful and ready helper.

St. John Bosco built his great Turin basilica under this title and said every brick was a grace from Our Lady, Help of Christians.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/11360c.htm