I was thrilled to receive a few packages of homemade Irish potato candy this week, which I was astonished to discover is a completely regional specialty known only to Philadelphia and South Jersey. It led me to joke to a confused colleague (from Dallas, no less) that I’m still not sure why anyone would want to live anywhere else — and certainly not there! I was literally enjoying the cinnamon-rolled coconut treats when I read about Pope Francis’ decision to designate Our Lady of Knock as an international Catholic shrine. It seemed an especially seasonal moment during the somewhat muted festivities for Saint Patrick this year.
Less famous to most Americans than Lourdes or Guadalupe, Knock is the site of a Marian apparition that has inspired generations of those of Irish descent. On Aug. 21, 1879, a few residents walking past the parish church in a small hamlet in County Mayo saw three people on the gable wall of the church. The witness accounts, which I have spent some time personally reading, described the three as clothed in gleaming white, illuminated in a strange fashion, and dry though surrounded by driving rain. After extensive ecclesiastical study, it was determined that the figures were indeed those of Mary, Saint Joseph and Saint John the Evangelist, in addition to a mystical image of an altar with a cross, a lamb, and a number of angels surrounding it.
Pope Francis joined the list of countless pilgrims who have visited Knock, speaking to assembled crowds there in 2018. In his comments, he prayed, “Amid the storms and winds that buffet our times, may families [of God’s faithful people on this emerald isle] be a bulwark of faith and goodness, resisting, in the best tradition of this nation, all that would diminish our dignity as men and women created in God’s image and called to the sublime destiny of eternal life.”
In a video message scheduled for March 19 — both the feast of Saint Joseph and the eighth anniversary of the pope’s inauguration — the pontiff will recognize many of the miracles attributed to the location by giving it a new official status.
The themes of pilgrimage, popular piety and reconciliation continue to be foundational cornerstones of the Francis pontificate. Thus, the fact that these mirror in many ways the contemporary mission of the shrine makes the decision a pleasant surprise for many, but not an entirely shocking one. From Luján and Aparecida to Montserrat and Maria Salus Populi Romani, and now to Knock, the pope’s Marian devotion is an integral part of his individual spirituality and his wider ecclesiological vision. His longstanding reverence for Mary’s spouse also serves to make this site a unique fit for his own pastoral concerns, as it is less common to have apparitions where the two are claimed to have appeared together.
As the United States is reportedly home to more than seven times the number of those with Irish blood than the island nation itself, this festival has implications for the church here as well. In fact, the last surviving witness, John Curry, died in relative obscurity in New York in 1943 and was re-interred at Cardinal Dolan’s request in the cemetery next to Old Saint Patrick’s Church on New York’s Lower East Side a few years ago. Hopefully, we can seek the intercession both of that young boy who witnessed something mysterious over a century ago and the Family with whom he spoke in the pouring rain to bring the United States a small share of the health and peace that have long been associated with that unassuming village in the West of Ireland.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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