Knock Shrine
Encyclopedia
Knock Shrine is a major Roman Catholic pilgrimage site and National Shrine
National shrine
A National Shrine is a Catholic church or other sacred place which has met certain requirements and is given this honor by the nation's Conference of Catholic Bishops to recognize the church's special historical, cultural and religious significance.- Process:...

 in the village of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland, where it is claimed there was an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....

, Saint John the Evangelist and Jesus Christ (as the Lamb of God
Lamb of God
The title Lamb of God appears in the Gospel of John, with the exclamation of John the Baptist: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" in John 1:29 when he sees Jesus....

) in 1879.

Details of the apparition

On the evening of 21 August 1879, people whose ages ranged from five years to seventy-five and included men, women, teenagers, children, witnessed what they claimed was an apparition of Our Lady
Blessed Virgin Mary (Roman Catholic)
Roman Catholic veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary is based on Holy Scripture: In the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a virgin. The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God through Mary thus signifies her honour as Mother of God...

, Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....

, and Saint John the Evangelist at the south gable end of the local small parish church, the Church of Saint John the Baptist. Behind them and a little to the left of Saint John was a plain altar. On the altar was a cross and a lamb (a traditional image of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, as reflected in the religious phrase The Lamb of God
Lamb of God
The title Lamb of God appears in the Gospel of John, with the exclamation of John the Baptist: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" in John 1:29 when he sees Jesus....

) with adoring angels.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was described as being very beautiful, standing a few feet above the ground. She wore a white cloak, hanging in full folds and fastened at the neck. The crown appeared brilliant, and of a golden brightness, of a deeper hue, than the striking whiteness of the robe she wore; the upper parts of the crown appeared to be a series of sparkles, or glittering crosses. She was described as "deep in prayer", with her eyes raised to heaven, her hands raised to the shoulders or a little higher, the palms inclined slightly to the shoulders. Bridget Trench "went in immediately to kiss, as I thought, the feet of the Blessed Virgin; but I felt nothing in the embrace but the wall, and I wondered why I could not feel with my hands the figures which I had so plainly and so distinctly seen".
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....

, also wearing white robes, stood on the Virgin's right hand. His head was bent forward from the shoulders towards the Blessed Virgin in respect.

Saint John the Evangelist stood to the left of the Blessed Virgin. He was dressed in a long robe and wore a mitre. He was partly turned away from the other figures. He appeared to be preaching and he held open a large book in his left hand.

To the left of St. John was an altar with a lamb on it with a cross standing on the altar behind the lamb.

Those who witnessed the apparition stood in the pouring rain for up to two hours reciting the Rosary
Rosary
The rosary or "garland of roses" is a traditional Catholic devotion. The term denotes the prayer beads used to count the series of prayers that make up the rosary...

, a traditional Catholic prayer. When the apparition began there was good light, but although it then became very dark, witnesses could still see the figures very clearly - they appeared to be the colour of a bright whitish light. The apparition did not flicker or move in any way. The witnesses reported that the ground around the figures remained completely dry during the apparition although the wind was blowing from the south. Afterwards, however the ground at the gable became wet and the gable dark.

To put it in its historical context, this apparition took place only nine years after the declaration of papal infallibility, and shortly before the death of Archbishop MacHale.

Church Commissions of inquiry

An ecclesiastical Commission of inquiry was established by the Archbishop of Tuam
Archbishop of Tuam
The Archbishop of Tuam is an archiepiscopal title which takes its name after the town of Tuam in County Galway, Ireland. The title was used by the Church of Ireland until 1839, and is still in use by the Roman Catholic Church.-History:...

, Most Rev. Dr. John MacHale
John MacHale
John MacHale was the Irish Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, and Irish Nationalist.He laboured and wrote to secure Catholic Emancipation, legislative independence, justice for tenants and the poor, and vigorously assailed the proselytizers and the anti-Catholic anti-national system of public...

. The Commission's final verdict was that the testimony of all the witnesses taken as a whole is trustworthy and satisfactory. At a second Commission of inquiry in 1936, the surviving witnesses confirmed the evidence they gave to the first Commission.

Cultural context

Subsequent sociologists, while neither accepting nor disputing what had allegedly occurred, but seeking to understand its cultural context, noted the timing of the events: how as at Lourdes and Fatima the "visitations" occurred at a time of immense cultural, social and economic change, and occurred to people whose traditional society was under threat from dramatic change. In the 1870s, Ireland was undergoing a period of dramatic upheaval. Some parts of the island had experienced what proved to be the last waves of a famine but which nevertheless brought back memories of the Great Irish Famine of the late 1840s that had decimated the countryside.

The appearance of railways brought new travel opportunities and challenges to closeknit communities, while the 1870s saw the beginnings of land reform that would change Irish rural life, reform initially fought for through mass mobilisation and sometimes violence in the Land War
Land War
The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from...

, led by organisations like Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt
Michael Davitt was an Irish republican and nationalist agrarian agitator, a social campaigner, labour leader, journalist, Home Rule constitutional politician and Member of Parliament , who founded the Irish National Land League.- Early years :Michael Davitt was born in Straide, County Mayo,...

's Land League
Irish National Land League
The Irish Land League was an Irish political organization of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on...

 and through the radical political leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...

. The land agent Captain Boycott
Charles Boycott
Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was a British land agent whose ostracism by his local community in Ireland as part of a campaign for agrarian tenants' rights in 1880 gave the English language the verb to boycott, meaning "to ostracise"...

, who was ostracised in 1880 on account of seeking rents from tenant farmers during a rent strike, became a worldwide cause célèbre, so creating the verb to boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...

meaning "to ostracise completely", was also based in County Mayo. In a time of change, symbols like the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph (known together within Catholicism as the Holy Family) marked a reminder of stability and tradition in a society whose change many people found bewildering. Depending on whether one accepted the veracity of the accounts of apparation or the religious beliefs underpinning it, it could be seen either as a delusion by a marginalised traditional society clinging to old certainties, or, in a Catholic religious context, the appearance of the "Mother of God" to people marginalised by society to show her support and offer her comfort.

A similar apparition reported by another teenaged girl at Lourdes
Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes or the Domain is an area of ground surrounding the shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes in the town of Lourdes, France...

, France, in 1858 had been well publicised across Ireland by 1879. In turn, the long-standing Catholic devotion to Mary had been emphasised by the new feast of the Immaculate Conception
Feast of the Immaculate Conception
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is celebrated on 8 December, nine months before the Nativity of Mary, which is celebrated on 8 September. It is the patronal feast day of the United States and the Republic of the...

 that was proclaimed in 1854.

Many Irish rural communities were occasionally prone to visions linked to religious matters. Primary education was controlled by the churches and had more religious content than today's schools have. The apparition story was published fifteen years before the different but equally remarkable case of Bridget Cleary
Bridget Cleary
Bridget Cleary was an Irish woman killed by her husband in 1895. Her death is notable for several peculiarities: the stated motive for the crime was her husband's belief that she had been abducted by fairies with a changeling left in her place; he claimed to have slain only the changeling...

.

Archdeacon Kavanagh

The parish priest at the time of the apparition was The Very Reverend Doctor Bartholomew A. Kavanagh, who was also Archdeacon
Archdeacon
An archdeacon is a senior clergy position in Anglicanism, Syrian Malabar Nasrani, Chaldean Catholic, and some other Christian denominations, above that of most clergy and below a bishop. In the High Middle Ages it was the most senior diocesan position below a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church...

 of the diocese
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tuam
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Tuam is a Roman Catholic archdiocese in western Ireland. According to tradition, the "Diocese of Tuam" was established in the sixth century by St. Jarlath...

. It has often been said it was no coincidence that the Virgin Mary chose to appear in Knock while Kavanagh was the parish priest. Widely considered a very holy priest in spite of his siding with landlords against the growing Land League movement, he was appointed parish priest of Knock-Aghamore in 1867, and was about 58 at the time of the apparition. He died in 1897 and is buried in the Old Church.

The pilgrimage site

The growth of railways and the appearance of local and national newspapers fueled interest in the small Mayo village. Reports of "strange occurrences in a small Irish village" were featured almost immediately in the international media, notably The Times (of London). Newspapers from as far away as Chicago sent reporters to cover the Knock phenomenon, while Queen Victoria asked her government in Dublin Castle to send her a report about the event. In later years Catholic nationalists used the apparition to symbolically challenge Queen Victoria and her descendants' position in Ireland using for Our Lady of Knock the title Our Lady, Queen of Ireland.

Knock today

Though it remained for almost 100 years a major Irish pilgrimage site, Knock established itself as a world religious site in large measure during the last quarter of the twentieth century, largely due to the work of its longtime parish priest Monsignor James Horan.Horan presided over a major rebuilding of the site, with the provision of a new large Knock Basilica (the first in Ireland) alongside the old church, which could no longer cope with visitor numbers. In 1979, the centenary of the apparition, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

, himself a devotee of Mary, visited Knock Shrine and stated that it was the goal of his Irish visit. On this occasion he presented a Golden Rose
Golden Rose
The Golden Rose is a gold ornament, which popes of the Catholic Church have traditionally blessed annually. It is occasionally conferred as a token of reverence or affection...

, a seldom-bestowed token of papal honour and recognition.

Controversially, Horan secured from Irish Taoiseach
Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the head of government or prime minister of Ireland. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas , and must, in order to remain in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil.The current Taoiseach is...

 Charles Haughey
Charles Haughey
Charles James "Charlie" Haughey was Taoiseach of Ireland, serving three terms in office . He was also the fourth leader of Fianna Fáil...

 millions of pounds of state aid to build a major airport near Knock. The project was condemned by critics in the media. At the time the Irish economy was in depression with massive emigration. Contrary to the critics' expectation however - and with the advent of low-fare and discount airlines - Horan International Airport (now known as Ireland West Airport Knock
Ireland West Airport Knock
-Ground transport:BusBus Éireann currently provide services from the Airport on the Derry-Sligo-Galway and Galway-Sligo-Derry Route 64, Ireland West Airport Knock - Castlebar - Westport - Achill Island route 440, Dublin - Athlone - Ireland West Airport Knock - Westport route 21, and connects with...

) became a commercial success, drawing not just pilgrims as well as passengers, but also becoming the air-gateway for the whole of Connacht
Connacht
Connacht , formerly anglicised as Connaught, is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the west of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for...

.

Purported solar phenomena

In October 2009, Knock was in the news when many people reported observing "miraculous" solar phenomena similar to the Miracle of the Sun
The Miracle of the Sun
The Miracle of the Sun was an event on 13 October 1917 in which 30,000 to 100,000 people, who were gathered near Fátima, Portugal, claimed to have witnessed extraordinary solar activity....

 widely believed to have occurred at the time of the Fatima
Fatima
-People:* Fatima , a female given name of Arabic origin* Fatima bint Muhammad, daughter of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad* Fatima Jinnah, the younger sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah...

 apparitions. The phenomena had been "prophesied" by Dublin-based mystic Joe Coleman a few weeks earlier; however the reports have been met with scepticism and the local Archbishop has warned Catholic congregations against putting any faith in these phenomena.
After the pilgrims had left the shrine after this event, the manager had to call in industrial cleaners to remove the rubbish left, including spilt food and drink. He also said that he would review whether gatherings would be allowed, citing health and safety issues as one problem.

In December 2009, an ophthalmologist from University College Hospital Galway
University College Hospital Galway
University College Hospital Galway or UCHG is the main acute hospital in Galway in the Republic of Ireland...

 issued a warning that there had been a significant spike in the number of cases of solar retinopathy
Solar retinopathy
Solar retinopathy is damage to the eye's retina, particularly the macula, from prolonged exposure to solar radiation. It usually occurs due to staring at the sun or viewing a solar eclipse.-Pathophysiology:...

 "all of them linked to events at Knock," with the observed patients having had "a significant reduction in their vision." The reports of people having observed the sun "dancing in the sky" were characterized as merely "sort of a cheap trick" caused by the extremely bright sunlight: "If you stare at the sun for long enough you're going to get some visual disturbances." The warning about the dangers of staring directly at the sun continued: "Not only will you get reduced vision but also a condition called metamorphopsia."

See also

  • Blessed Virgin Mary (Roman Catholic)
    Blessed Virgin Mary (Roman Catholic)
    Roman Catholic veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary is based on Holy Scripture: In the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a virgin. The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God through Mary thus signifies her honour as Mother of God...

  • Marian apparitions
    Marian apparitions
    A Marian apparition is an event in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more people. They are often given names based on the town in which they were reported, or on the sobriquet which was given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition...

  • Knock, County Mayo
  • Republic of Ireland
    Republic of Ireland
    Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

  • Roman Catholic Church
    Roman Catholic Church
    The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

  • Moving statues
    Moving statues
    The moving statues phenomenon occurred during the summer of 1985 in Ireland, where statues of the Virgin Mary were reported to move spontaneously....

  • Walsingham
    Walsingham
    Walsingham is a village in the English county of Norfolk. The village is famed for its religious shrines in honour of the Virgin Mary and as a major pilgrimage centre...

  • Shrines to the Virgin Mary
    Shrines to the Virgin Mary
    In the culture and practice of some Christian Churches - mainly, but not solely, the Roman Catholic Church - a Shrine to the Virgin Mary is a shrine marking an apparition or other miracle ascribed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or a site on which is centered a historically strong Marian devotion...

  • Our Lady of Fátima
    Our Lady of Fatima
    Our Lady of Fátima is a famous title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary as she appeared in apparitions reported by three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal. These occurred on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on May 13...

  • Our Lady of Lourdes
    Our Lady of Lourdes
    Our Lady of Lourdes is the name used to refer to the Marian apparition said to have appeared before various individuals on separate occasions around Lourdes, France...


External links


Further reading

  • John MacPhilpin. The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock. PJ Kennedy. 1904
  • Sister Mary Francis Clark. Three Visits to Knock. PJ Kennedy. 1904
  • Neary, Tom, I Saw Our Lady.
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