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When he returned to Argentina following his doctoral studies in Germany,Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ, now Pope Francis, took with him a particular fondness for a Marian devotion that he hadencountered in Bavaria. Hedwig Lewis SJ introduces us to the increasingly popular devotion to ‘Mary Untier of Knots’.
‘Mary Untier of Knots, pray for us’ would be a strange- sounding invocation in the Litany to Our Lady to which we are so accustomed. In fact, devotion to the Blessed Virgin under this title has been common in parts of Germany for centuries. Recently, however, the world’s attention was drawn to it when Vatican Radio revealed that Pope Francis had championed the devotion decades ago in Argentina.
In the 1980s, while doing his doctoral studies in theology in Freiburg, Germany, as a Jesuit priest, Jorge Bergoglio saw a painting in a church in Augsburg entitled ‘Mary Untier of Knots’. He was so impressed by its stark symbolism that he took postcards of the image back with him to his home province of Argentina. He used to enclose copies in every letter he sent out. An Argentinian artist-friend of his made an oil-on-canvas miniature painting of the picture, which was hung in the chapel of Colegio del Salvador in Buenos Aires where Bergoglio was posted. The college staff was so attracted by it that they persuaded the local pastor to get a larger copy made. This was displayed in the parish church of San Jose del Talar, in 1996. Eventually, devotion to Mary under the title ‘Untier of Knots’ spread across Latin America.
Shortly after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, as Benedict XVI, the then-Cardinal Bergoglio presented the German-born pope with a silver chalice engraved with the image of Mary Untier of Knots along with that of Our Lady of Lujan, a popular Marian devotion in Argentina.
The Painting
The original Baroque painting of ‘Mary Untier of Knots’, by Johann George Melchior Schmidtner, dating from around 1700, is found in the church of St. Peter am Perlach, in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. It measures six feet in height and almost four feet in width.
The painting depicts Mary suspended between heaven and earth, resplendent with light. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove is above her head, reminding us that she became Mother of God and full of grace by virtue of the third person of the Trinity. She is dressed resplendently in crimson, and a deep blue mantle representing her glory as Queen of the Universe. A crown of twelve stars
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