Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (565 page)

1647 The Blessed Virgin appeared to a farm girl and a lay-brother in Buenos Aires, Argentine, and ordered them to exhort everyone to do penance.

8.11.1660 A bloody sword that was visible to everybody appeared in the sky at Gorlitz, Silesia.

1671 Marguerite Marie Alacocque, France, had already had visions of Mary in her worldly life; after she entered the Salesian Order she had more visions of Christ.

1679 Wonderful luminous apparitions repeatedly appeared over the pilgrimage church at Albendorf, Germany.

c.l682 Our Lord, with his body pierced with wounds, showed himself to Veronica Giulani at Mercatello, Italy.

1696 The bishop of Quito, Ecuador, had a miraculous cure when he was dangerously ill. The miraculous image of Guapulo had been brought for an evening procession. When the Gloria was sung, Mary appeared as Queen of Heaven.

21.9.1823 Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, had a vision of an angel who disappeared on a shaft of light going up to heaven. Subsequent visions led Smith to a secret place where he found the gold tablets that he translated. That was how the Mormon Bible originated.

1835 In Trinitapoli, Italy, Mary told the six-year-old Joseph Maria Leone, who had fallen into a ditch, to be a good boy and stop playing with his naughty friends.

28.1,1840 In Paris, the nun Justine Bisqueyburu saw Mary with her flaming heart pierced by a sword and wearing a white robe and a blue mantle.

8.5.1840 Jean-Baptist Vianney, the Cure of Ars, and Mme Etienne Durie, saw a vision of Mary in his room. The Madonna was in a white dress dotted with golden roses; her brow was encircled with a crown of stars and diamonds flashed from her hands.

8.9.1840 The nun Justine Bisqueyburu had a further vision at Blangy, Seine-Inferieure, France. It appeared to her in a green scapula.

10.1.1842 Alphonse Ratisbonne, a former Jew, saw the Virgin Mary in a side chapel of the church of St. Andreas delle Fratte in Rome. She looked exactly as she did on the medal he had been wearing for some time.

14.8.1842 The nun Maria-Stanislaus frequently saw the Blessed Virgin in the 'Classroom of the Poor'

in the Convent of the Visitation at Celles, near Tournai, Belgium.

19.9.1846 The Madonna appeared to the children Maximin Giraud (11) and Melanic Calvat (15) at La Salette, Isere, France. She wore a gleaming white robe and held a conversation with them.