THE PILGRIM VIRGIN
.You traverse the earth in the guise of the Pilgrim Virgin bringing to sinners repentance, and to the lukewarm, fervor.....
In Valladolid, Spain, 200,000 people filled the streets, and jammed the square where the Statue stopped for a few moments. A woman who had a seventeen year-old deaf-mute daughter began to work her way through the crowd, leading her daughter towards the same Statue. Slowly, the woman pressed her way through the crowd. Some who knew her, and others who read the years of mingled pain and hope in her motherly face, parted to let her pass towards the image which had come from Fatima. When they had finally come near the Statue. suddenly this girl...who from infancy had never heard and had never spoken a word, threw up her arms before the Statue, and cried out, "Holy Virgin, Mother of God". Perhaps the most symbolic event of this strange "Pilgrim Virgin" journey took place at the Franco-Spanish border which had been closed because Communists of France were agitating for the overthrow of France, and the restoration of Communism in Spain.
The Pilgrim Virgin Set Aside National Borders
Our Lady's statue was born down to the closed frontier. Tens of thousands of French were gathered on one side, and tens of thousands of Spaniards on the other. No one seems to know just what happened; but the Statue never stopped. A French bishop and a Spanish bishop moved forward, and embraced one another, and as some two hundred thousand people sang, "Ave, Ave, Ave Maria", each in his own tongue, the statue of the Lady who had promised world peace moved on .
A FEW MONTHS LATER, THE ENTIRE BORDER WAS OFFICIALLY OPENED. IT IS OPEN NOW!.
Thus, began the famous tour of the "Pilgrim Virgin" which, four years later, evoked from the lips of Pope Pius XII, the exclamation, "At her passing, marvels of grace are multiplied in such a way, that we can hardly believe what we see taking place". The greatest fruit of the Pilgrim Virgin has been CONVERSIONS numbered in the many thousands.
A Pilgrim Virgin For The United States
What is the Catholic attitude towards such a Statue as the Pilgrim Virgin? The Statue, unlike the idols of paganism, is a mere "symbol". No honor is due to it, nor given to it, but to the ONE it represents. Miracles do not come from the plaster, any more than our prayers go to the same. They come from God. Following the ardent requests from many people, the Bishop of Leiria, Fatima, consented to bless a statue for the Americans. On October 13, the 30th anniversary of the final apparition of Fatima, he blessed a second Pilgrim Virgin for the United State. Within one year, it had become apparent that the Pilgrim Virgin had evoked the greatest Marian, public demonstration this nation has ever seen. At a place in 'rural' America, (St. Meinrad's Abbey in Indiana), one hundred and forty thousand people participated in honoring her during a week of ceremonies.
...From Flora, Illinois...conviction that the visit of the "Pilgrim Virgin" Statue to this predominantly Protestant town has brought a "more gentle spirit of understanding" has been expressed by Charles A Crowder, non-Catholic editor of the Flora Sentinal.
Converted Many Moslems
From Father Fournier, of the White Fathers in Uganda, Africa....The Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima is accomplishing wonders in darkest Africa, too. Moslems have joined Christians in paying homage to her whose image is girding the globe. Whites and blacks alike in the thousands knelt side by side at a midnight Mass in Durban, South Africa, where recently the headlines told of violent race riots. Much more is to be told of the two large Pilgrim Virgin Statues of Our Lady of Fatuum, that travel through the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, the history of which is detailed in the book, "Russia Will Be Converted" (from which above information is taken). The author is John M. Haffert, The Blue Army, Washington , New Jersey.
Pope Pius XII said, "When the Pilgrim Virgin Statue comes, it is not merely a statue. It is the Mother of God".