Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major

The Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major commemorates the oldest and greatest of the churches of the West dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, standing on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The present basilica was built under Pope Sixtus III shortly after the Council of Ephesus in 431 solemnly proclaimed Mary to be Theotokos, the Mother of God, and its magnificent mosaics celebrate that truth; as one of the four major papal basilicas it has remained a center of Marian devotion for more than fifteen centuries.

An ancient and beloved tradition, from which the church's older title of Our Lady of the Snows derives, tells how the Virgin appeared to a Roman couple and to Pope Liberius and marked out the site of the future church by a miraculous fall of snow on the Esquiline in the heat of an August night. Each year on 5 August a shower of white petals recalls the legend, and the Church keeps this day as the memorial of the basilica's dedication.