Encyclopaedia of the Holy Spirit

Our Lady

5 documented wonders in the chamber of Our Lady — each with its place, its period and the sources behind it.

Our Lady · December 1531

Our Lady of Guadalupe

In December 1531, near Mexico City, the Virgin Mary appeared to the Aztec convert Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac, leaving her image imprinted on his cactus-fiber cloak. The tilma survives nearly five centuries later, and generations of scientists have failed to explain how it was made or why it has not decayed.

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Our Lady · February–July 1858

Our Lady of Lourdes

Between February and July 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, France, revealing a spring that continues to flow. Since 1858, the Lourdes Medical Bureau has documented thousands of claimed cures, seventy of which the Church has formally recognized as miraculous.

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Our Lady · May 13 – October 13, 1917

Fátima and the Miracle of the Sun

From May to October 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared six times to three shepherd children in Fátima, Portugal, culminating on October 13 in a public solar phenomenon witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people, including secular journalists who had come expecting to debunk a hoax. The event was reported the next day in the Lisbon press.

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Our Lady · 1830 (medal struck 1832)

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

In 1830, at the motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac in Paris, the Virgin Mary appeared twice to the young novice Catherine Labouré, on the second occasion showing herself with rays of light streaming from her hands and instructing that a medal be struck; within a decade of its 1832 minting, reported graces and conversions had earned it the popular name it still bears.

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Our Lady · 1973–1981

Our Lady of Akita

Between 1973 and 1981, a wooden statue of the Virgin at a small convent in Akita, Japan, was reported to weep, sweat blood, and bear a wound matching one that appeared on the hand of Sister Agnes Sasagawa, a deaf nun who also received messages warning of chastisement; in 1984 the local bishop, John Shojiro Ito, declared the events worthy of belief and permitted veneration in his diocese.

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