Our Lady
7 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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Our Lady · 1696 (repeated 1715 and 1905)
Our Lady of Máriapócs, the Weeping Icon
In a wooden village church in eastern Hungary, on 4 November 1696, a Byzantine icon of the Mother of God began to weep during the Divine Liturgy and continued for two weeks, before dozens of sworn witnesses of three confessions. The original was taken to Vienna by imperial order; the copy left behind wept twice more, in 1715 and 1905, and Máriapócs is today the national shrine of the Hungarian Greek Catholics.
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Our Lady · Mid-16th century (arrival); December 7, 1857 (La Gritería, León); August 14, 1947 (Gritería Chiquita)
Our Lady of El Viejo and La Purísima
A carved image of the Immaculate Conception, given by St. Teresa of Ávila to her brother Rodrigo de Cepeda y Ahumada, survived the wreck of his galleon at the Nicaraguan port of El Realejo in the mid-sixteenth century and has never left the town of El Viejo. She is the patroness of Nicaragua. Around her grew La Purísima and La Gritería — the December cry "¿Quién causa tanta alegría?" answered "¡La Concepción de María!" — and the Gritería Chiquita, vowed in August 1947 when the Cerro Negro volcano stopped erupting the night a bishop promised it.
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