A remarkable number of appearances of Mary have happened in the last few hundred years. One such apparition took place just before the pronouncement of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, in 1830. Catherine Laboure, who entered the convent of the Daughters of Charity, had a vision of what was termed the Immaculate Conception. Laboure saw Mary standing on a globe, rays of light streaming toward it from her hands. She is framed by the words, “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” A medal was struck of that image; it became known as the Miraculous Medal, because of miracles associated with it.

Shortly after the pronouncement of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous, who lived near Lourdes, in France, had a series of visions. Mary ordered her to drink from a spring, which appeared when Soubirous dug the ground. When the girl asked the name of the woman in her vision, the vision replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Many cures have been associated with the waters of the spring at Lourdes. St. Bernadette was canonized in 1933.

In 1917, Mary also appeared at Cova da Iria in Portugal. Three children — Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Martos — saw a woman hovering over a tree. The woman promised to return on the thirteenth of every month for six months, when she would tell them the purpose of her appearances. On October 13, the day of the final vision, the woman announced that she was the Lady of the Rosary and that war in Europe would end that day. Then the pouring rain stopped, and those present saw the sun dance around the sky, emitting multicolored rays.

In the Last Fifty Years

These miraculous apparitions continued well into the twentieth century. In 1979, Mary revealed herself to an Anglican man in Australia; in 1980, she was seen by a church sacristan in Nicaragua; in the years 1981–1988, she appeared to children in the poor village of Medjugorje, Yugoslavia. Throughout the 1980s, appearances were documented in Ireland, Egypt, and Italy. Witnesses of these appearances often say that when they saw Mary, she had a message — to seek peace, to build a community of faith, or to return to more spiritual life.