He presented himself as a former "Satanic priest" who returned to the Catholic faith and became a Dominican tertiary, dedicating his life to the rosary and the Virgin Mary.

[1] Bartolo Longo was born into a wealthy family on February 10, 1841, in the small town of Latiano, near Brindisi, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[3] In the 1860s, the Catholic Church in Italy found itself at odds with the strong nationalistic movement that inspired the cause for Risorgimento.

[5] Because of this, many students at the University of Naples took part in public demonstrations against the pope, believed in witchcraft, and consulted Neapolitan mediums.

It was Pepe who convinced him, in Longo's account, to abandon Satanism and introduced him to the Dominican friar and Catholic priest Alberto Radente, who led him to a devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Rosary.

Around this time, he reportedly visited a séance and held up a rosary, declaring: "I renounce spiritualism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood."

At one point, he noted struggling with suicidal thoughts, but rejected them by recalling the promise of St. Dominic: "he who propagates my Rosary will be saved".

[8] With the help of Countess Mariana di Fusco, he inaugurated a confraternity of the Rosary and in October 1873 started restoring a dilapidated church.

M. Concetta de Litala, a religious sister of the Monastery of the Rosary at Porta Medina, had been holding it for the Dominican priest Alberto Radente.

At the suggestion of Pope Leo XIII, Bartolo Longo and the Countess Mariana di Fusco were married on April 7, 1885.