Our Lady who Unties the Knots: the invocation venerated by Pope Francis

Our Lady of Knotenlöserinbetter known as Mary, the One Who Unties the Knots is the Marian invocation especially revered by the Pope Francis and the image of the large Christmas card that thousands of young people have chosen to give to the Pope. The initiative has come from the U.S. organization Catholic to the Max. http://es.gaudiumpress.org/content/53750

Pope Francis brought from Augsburg to Buenos Aires a postcard with this image, a picture that the painter Johan Georg Melchior Melchior Schmidtner made around 1700 and which is in the St. Peter am Perlach Church of that German city. In Buenos Aires he commissioned a copy of the image that was installed in the church of San José del Talar.

Although it is not widespread in the universal Church, the devotion to Our Lady who Unties the Knots has long been practiced in the city of Augsburg. At the beginning of the 18th century, the priest responsible for the St. Peter am Perlach Churchlocated in the center of the city, entrusted to the painter Johann Schmittdner a painting of the Blessed Virgin, 1.10 m wide by 1.82 m high.

It is an oil painting, in German baroque style, of remarkable artistic value. The Virgin Mary is depicted standing, surrounded by angels and protected by the light of the Holy Spirit. It was always understood that the painter wanted, with this set of symbols, to represent the Blessed Virgin as seen by St. Irenaeus of Lyon (202), untying the great knot of History which is the Original Sin.