According to the New Testament, Mary (Miriam: ; BC – AD), also known as Saint Mary, the Virgin Mary, or the Blessed Virgin Mary—amongst other titles, styles and honorifics—was a Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth  and the mother of Jesus.

Roman Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus includes prayer, pious acts, visual arts, poetry and music devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Popes have encouraged it, while also taking steps to reform some manifestations of it. The Holy See has insisted on the importance of distinguishing "true from false devotion, and authentic doctrine from its deformations by excess or defect". There are significantly more titles, feasts and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than in other Christian traditions. The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God. "Mariolatry" is a Protestant pejorative for perceived excessive Catholic devotion to Mary.