The statue of Our Lady of Fatima will visit Green Church on July 9

Statue commemorating the miraculous event of 1917 in Portugal

GREEN − The International Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima recalls the miraculous apparitions of the Virgin Mary reported by Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto in Fatima, Portugal, between May 13, 1917 and October 1 . 13, 1917.

Since then, millions of Christians have visited Fatima, many seeking their own miracles.

On July 9, the statue will be on display from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Queen of Heaven Catholic Church, 1800 Steese Road. It’s one of 14 stops July 7-20 in the Diocese of Cleveland.

The tour will be hosted by Our Mother’s Hands, a Marian ministry with a chapter in Akron.

Rosemary Reed is a member of Our Mother’s Hands in St. Sebastian.

“Sister Lucia had planned to leave the convent and her order so she could travel the world and spread the message,” Reed said. “She later said she felt Our Lady had sent John Hafford to her as a gift from heaven to keep her in the convent, but also to assure her that the message of Fatima would be spread. And that’s when they created the Blue Army of Our Lady, which is now part of the World Apostolate of Fatima. It’s the only organization approved by the Vatican to carry the message of Fatima.”

The statue made its North American debut in Canada in 1947 and was brought to the United States on Dec. 8, 1947, the holy day of the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic Church, Reed noted.

“This particular statue has been featured in over 100 countries,” she said.

Outdoor worship space “Walk with the Saints” at Queen of Heaven Church

Reed said the visit lasted five years.

“I met with the international group and thought it would be great to bring it here,” she said. “I had been in touch with them on and off because, of course, COVID happened. In October of last year, they messaged us and asked if we could schedule the two-week visit. We wanted to make sure we covered all eight counties in the diocese, so we have 14 sites.”

“The summit of our faith is Jesus”

Reed wants to clarify that Catholics do not worship statues, nor Mary.

“We don’t worship Mary,” she said. “As Catholics, we know that the pinnacle of our faith is Jesus. Of course, we honor her as the “Mother of God”. A statue is just a physical reminder of a person, no different than a photograph. It’s something to help you focus. This particular statue has traveled the world because it was carved under the direction of a very holy woman who was a servant of. God.”

Mary, she added, is an example of how to enter heaven.

“I think there’s a certain part of us that makes it so that you can kind of erase your own sin because you can say, ‘I’m a man, he’s God; it’s too hard to ‘be like that,'” she said. . “I think when you look at Mary, she was flesh and blood and yet she set an example for all of us. It’s much more relevant. We honor her because she allowed herself to be drained to become exactly that. which she needed for God’s plan.

Reed said there were reports of people converting to Christianity or returning to church after seeing the statue.

“There are people who come in asking for a miracle, and I know it would be wonderful if I could tell them, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve had all these miracles,’” she said. “Our goal is always to bring people to Jesus, through Mary. That’s in our mission statement. The goal is not to come here so you can worship Mary. The goal is to come here so you can find your way to Jesus. We were very honored to be able to promote something of such magnitude.”

Marianne Scholarship

Scholar and researcher Karen E. Park, co-editor of “American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism,” was a keynote speaker at this year’s Marian Forum, hosted by the University of Dayton’s International Marian Research Institute.

“It’s kind of surprising to people that I didn’t come visit because my area of interest was primarily related to a particular or personal devotion to Mary,” said Park, a professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. “As I think back to my Catholic childhood in the ’70s and ’80s, devotion and worship to Mary was not emphasized in my Catholic church or school as it might have been for a previous generation. In fact, I didn’t think about Mary much, except at Christmas. Until I began studying the history of Christianity in graduate school, it became clear to me that Mary is not just a peripheral part of the Christian tradition, but at the heart of it.”

Memories of the founder of EWTN “Nothing would stop her.” Saint-Raphaël Center pays tribute to Mother Angelica with a monument

Park said Christians have long been fascinated by the story of Mary.

“But everything we know or believe about his own birth or childhood, including the names of his parents, comes from apocryphal sources and traditions,” she said. “What amazes me is that these sources and traditions date back in some cases to the first and second centuries, demonstrating that from the beginning, Christians were deeply interested in Mary, so that devotion to Mary is not, as is sometimes believed, a medieval tradition, an embellishment or a fixation of the 19th century, but it has been an integral part from the beginning.

There are 13 Marian shrines in the United States, including the Shrine of the Sorrowful Mother in Bellville, Ohio.

“I believe it is important to think about Mary if we want to understand Christianity, especially lived Christianity,” Park said. “Marian devotion is often glossed over or treated as something marginal or somehow outside the mainstream of Christian belief and practice, and in general there is a feeling that the study of Mary will automatically involve a sort of fringe element. It challenges us not to see Marian devotion or spatial and spiritual encounters with her as strange or strange. But people have always brought their ordinary lives and ordinary concerns to Mary and the shrines. Marians.

The children never wavered from their story. The Vatican accepted their testimony as valid in 1930. The Marto brothers died in 1919 and 1920. They were canonized by Pope Francis in 2017, becoming the youngest people ever to be canonized without being martyred. Dos Santos, who became a Carmelite nun, died in 2005 at the age of 97.

For a detailed schedule of the Queen of Heaven exhibit, call 330-896-2345 or visit https://queenofheavenparish.org

Contact Charita at 330-580-8313 or [email protected]

On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

The statue will be housed locally

Schedule of the International Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Churches in the Diocese of Cleveland:

July 7 – Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Cleveland, 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

July 8 – St. Joseph Parish, Avon Lake, 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

July 9 – Queen of Heaven Parish, Green, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

July 10 − St. Ambrose Parish, Brunswick, all day

July 11 – Regina Health Centre, Richfield, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

July 12 − Shrine of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Cleveland, 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

July 13 – St. Jerome Parish, Cleveland, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

July 14 – 15. Sebastian Parish, Akron, 8:30 a.m. July 14 to 10:30 a.m. July 15

July 15 – St. Edward Parish, Ashland, noon to 7 p.m.

July 16 − St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church, Wooster, 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

July 18 − Immaculate Conception Parish, Madison, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

July 19 − Sts. Edward and Lucy Parish, Parkman Township, 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

July 20 – Holy Family Parish, Parma, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.