– Brother Sean MacNamara
Our Lady of Knock
On a wet Thursday evening, August 21st, 1879, fifteen people watched - for about two hours - a heavenly vision consisting of Our Lady, St. Joseph, St. John, the Heavenly Lamb and adoring Angels at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Knock, Co. Mayo, Ireland - now the National Irish Shrine of Our Lady, visited by over a million pilgrims annually.
Many readers of this article will know of the famous Rosary priest, Fr. Patrick Peyton, born in Mayo and a regular visitor to Knock.
Were it not that in 1972 I had read in one of Ireland s weekly Catholic papers about the Mary Garden movement established in Philadelphia in 1951 by John S. Stokes, Jr., and the late Edward A. G. McTague, the chances are we would not now have our Irish National Mary Garden at the Shrine.