Perth Voice Interactive

THIS year marks the 70th time the Madonna di Capo D’Orlando will be part of the Blessing of the Fleet.

And like the appearance of the original Madonna many centuries earlier, there’s an element of mystery and legend about how the silver  statue came to be in Fremantle.

No one’s quite sure who brought the Madonna back from Capo D’Orlando after it was gifted to the Fremantle community by the priest and townsfolk of the picturesque Sicilian fishing village.

Some say it might have been smuggled into the country in someone’s pocket.

“We’re still trying to work out who was the exact person that brought the statue out from Capo D’Orlando,” says Blessing of the Fleet committee president John Minutillo.

Initially there was talk of having two Blessing festivals, one celebrated by the folk who hailed from Molfetta, the other those from Capo D’Orlando.

But Mr Minutillo says by the time the statue arrived, it had been decided to bring everyone together for one big day.

Former Fremantle councillor and Blessing stalwart John Alberti has a suspicion he knows who may have been the Madonna’s secret courier.

“We think that a guy that brought it over, the surname is Vinci,” Mr Alberti said.

“I think of the guy that I used to see, that used to come from Fremantle to Sicily every couple of years, because his cousin was a bootmaker right next to where I lived.

“He used to be there every day and used to stir me up, being six or seven years old, and we’ve got a feeling that he might have brought it.

“He was a Vinci.”

The Fremantle Madonna is an exact replica of the one venerated by the folk of Capo D’Orlando, and while their original was stolen some time in 1925, they have their own legends about its arrival.

The story goes that two sentinels at the castle of Count Girolamo Ioppolo saw a pilgrim in the square who played a bugle used to warn the townsfolk about pirate raids.

They went to tell him off, but he ran away, leaving a bag containing an image of the Madonna and child. The guards believed the pilgrim was an apparition of the Saint Cono Navacita.

The Madonna was taken to Naso, but after a series of earthquakes hit the town, she was returned and a church built on the site.

There she rested for hundreds of years until her theft: “They’re still looking for her,” Mr Alberti says.

This year a delegation from Capo D’Orlando, including the first archbishop from the town, will be joining the Fremantle Blessing of the Fleet.

There’ll also be a film crew from the town’s local news station coming to capture the festival.

“He’s going to talk to a lot of the old people from Sicily, on why they came out here and how they survived here,” Mr Minutillo said.

“It wouldn’t have been easy in the early days of them coming out from Sicily, and just coming to a strange country, but they all did it.”

FREMANTLE BLESSING OF THE FLEET
SUNDAY OCTOBER 27