“High up on the slope in the Cova da Iria, [Fatima, Portugal] I was playing with Jacinta and Francisco at building a little stone wall around a clump of furze. Suddenly we saw what seemed to be a flash of lightning. ‘We’d better go home,’ I said to my cousins, ‘that’s lighting; we may have a thunderstorm.’

‘Yes, indeed!’ they answered.

We began to go down the slope, hurrying the sheep along towards the road. We were more or less half-way down the slope, and almost level with a large holmoak tree that stood there, when we saw another flash of lightening. We had only gone a few steps further when, there before us on a small holmoak, we beheld a Lady all dressed in white. She was more brilliant than the sun, and radiated a light more clear and intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through it.

We stopped, astounded, before the Apparition. We were so close, just a few feet away from her, that we were bathed in the light which surrounded her, or rather, which radiated from her. Then Our Lady spoke to us:

‘Do not be afraid. I will do you no harm…'”

Sister Mary Lucia recalled this vision of Mary, which occurred May 13, 1917, in her memoirs. Lucia, along with her cousins Jacinta and Francisco, encountered Mary several times during their childhoods.

An apparition is a medium through which God is revealing a message to a person through the individual who is appearing, whether it is Mary, Jesus or another saint. The Catholic Church approves some apparitions, like Lucia’s, and does not authenticate others, despite devotion to the apparitions.

Mary has appeared to various people of different races, backgrounds, geographies and ages throughout history. Her messages have confirmed certain Church dogma, impacted masses and warned the world of catastrophic events.

1858: Lourdes, France. Mary reveals she is the Immaculate Conception to an illiterate, sickly fourteen-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous.

1531: Mexico City. Eight million Indians, who had previously sacrificed thousands of their own people annually, convert to Catholicism following Mary’s appearances to Juan Diego, a recently converted 57-year-old Indian of simple nature.

1917: Fatima, Portugal. Mary gives Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco the following warning, which essentially was fulfilled:

“The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI… To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart… If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, the Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

The events that took place in Lourdes, Mexico City and Fatima are not the only approved Marian apparitions; however, they represent the dynamics of official visions of Mary.

But amidst approved Marian apparitions exist reports of Mary sightings the Church has not deemed authentic. The reason, Bishop Jacobs of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux says, is the Church uses caution when approving an apparition.

“The Church only approves after a long time of investigations, to make sure that it is an authentic apparition,” he says. “It doesn’t want a hoax to be an approved apparition.”

Bishop Jacobs says the Church is not labeling unapproved Marian apparitions as false but rather is investigating those events. In the case of events not yet approved, the Church has not found enough evidence to prove the apparitions’ authenticity, he says.

Church officials seek certain criteria when investigating, Bishop Jacobs says. “Are there any miracles? Is the teaching that comes out of it in line with the Church’s teachings? Is it in line with the scriptures? Does it lead people to a deeper relationship with God?” Bishop Jacobs questions.

Miracles. In Guadeloupe it was the miraculous tilma, or poncho, of Juan Diego, on which an image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe formed and is still intact today, 450 years later. In Lourdes it was the healing waters of the spring Bernadette frantically tried to reveal. At Fatima it was the “Miracle of the Sun” – where the blinding-gold then dull, silver sun reportedly danced in the sky, then descended upon the 70,000 spectators.

But in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, a spirit of pilgrimage, prayerfulness and piety also abounds. Since 1981, people from all corners of the world have journeyed to this small, rural village to visit the “Hill of Apparitions” and brave the “Mountain of the Way of the Cross.”

The sojourners have seen miracles; they have witnessed conversions. They have listened to the visionaries’ accounts of what the Mother of God continues to reveal to them.

Regardless if Medjugorje or the countless other sites of reported apparitions become authenticated, the devotion of the people who have experienced events too powerful and profound for words will not waver.