Footprints in the stone, and a question for Rome

SIPONTO, Apulia, 493 AD — People have been walking up the mule tracks from Siponto to pray in a cave. It is near the top of Mount Gargano, in Apulia. According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, there is an altar inside it that no bishop has consecrated, which means no bishop has set it aside for God.

Nobody in Siponto could agree what should be done with the cave. They could not even agree whether anyone ought to go into it at all. Saint Lawrence Maiorano, their bishop, did not decide the question on his own. To dedicate a church is to set a building aside for God, and only a bishop can do it.

According to the same longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to St. Lawrence. The Archangel told him to build a church on the mountain in his honour. Some time later the Neapolitans, who were still pagan, made war on Siponto and Benevento.

St. Lawrence told the people of Siponto to ask the Neapolitans for three days without fighting. In those three days they fasted and asked St. Michael to protect them. The pagans were beaten and chased all the way back to Naples.

The morning after

The people of Siponto climbed back up to the cave to give thanks. In the morning, beside its north door, they found small footprints like a man’s, pressed hard into the stone. They knew that St. Michael had left them to show he had been there.

After that a roof was put up over the mouth of the cave. The altar was set inside, and the place was called Apodonias, from the marks.

They left the cave itself exactly as it stood. St. Lawrence sent messengers to Rome, to ask what should be done about the place.

The answer came back with them, and it named a day. It was the day the people of Siponto had beaten the Neapolitans. If a man was to dedicate the cave, that was the day to do it. If not, that was the day to ask God what he wanted done.

Until then Pope Gelasius I and St. Lawrence were each to keep a three-day fast with their people. They were to pray that the Holy Trinity would finish what it had begun to give them through St. Michael. Both cities kept the fast, just as Rome had told them to.

Pope Gelasius I settled the question. He said yes: the cave could be dedicated as a place of worship. Then he climbed Mount Gargano, all the way up to the cave, for the first time.