Nicola d’Onofrio did not write a ‘Meditated Rosary’, even though he commented on some Mysteries on a number of occasions in the month of May, as was the tradition at the Roman Camillian studentate, and some witnesses say that they were helped by him in doing this. But we have not found any traces of this. It was the very young Barbara of Rome, who is strongly devoted to the young Servant of God, who when reading and studying his ‘Writings’ compiled this meditated Holy Rosary with Nicolino, taking freely selected passages from ‘Un amore Giovane’ (edited by Fr. Felice Ruffini, the General Postulation of the Camillians, Rome, 1990) which lead to ‘immersion in the contemplation of the mystery of he who is our peace’.

‘The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6)’ (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Apostolica Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 1)

The young Camillian student Nicola d’Onofrio, who tenderly loved the Mother of God, wrote in  his Spiritual Diary, ‘I have the Mother of Jesus, I abandon myself to her arms, to her heart. Every day I will entrust myself to her with my consecration, I will greet her with the Rosary’.

The witnesses who knew him have confirmed that he observed this holy resolution until the last day of his brief life.

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