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One of the six approved Litanies of the Catholic Church.

This litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary was composed during the Middle Ages. The place of honor it now holds in the life of the Church is due to its faithful use at the shrine of the Holy House at Loreto. It was definitively approved by Pope Sixtus V in 1587, and all other Marian litanies were suppressed, at least for public use. Since then, several Popes have added titles to the Litany, as only they may do.

The Litany's titles and invocations set before us Mary's exalted privileges, her holiness of life, her amiability and power, her motherly spirit and queenly majesty. The principle that has been followed in their interpretation is the one enunciated by Blessed Pius IX: 'God enriched her so wonderfully from the treasury of His divinity, far beyond all angels and saints with the abundance of all heavenly gifts, that she...should show forth such fullness of innocence and holiness, than which a greater under God is unthinkable and which, beside God, no one can even conceive in thought.'

Hence, whatever virtue and holiness is found in angels and saints must be present in Mary in an immeasurably higher degree.

God Bless.

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