Mary Page News
October 27, 2000
Mary Page News items give insight into our interest areas, our outreach, and the myriad ways
people honor Our Lady. We welcome your input and your comments.
Features
New Marian Library Founded in Korea
The Marianist brothers and priests have been active in Korea for forty years. The flourishing
congregation has schools and there are many who belong to the apostolic outreach of the Family
of Mary.
Among the fortieth anniversary celebrations was the founding of a Marian Library for Korea at
the beginning of October 2000. The library occupies a floor in a Marianist religious center in
Seoul. A pleasant facility provides student carols, integrates a place for student exchange, has
office space, and the space for the developing stacks of the library.
Fr. Johann G. Roten, SM, director of Dayton's Marian Library/International Marian Research
Institute attended the opening of the program for the opening of the library. He represented the
general administrative and the Cincinnati provincial administrative while assisting in the
initiation of the library. The Dayton library has contributed many triplicate volumes and other
items such as art and objects of devotion from its own resources.
A major purpose of the library will be to assist the establishment of a new mariological
colloquium for Asia and the Oceanic rim.
New Exhibit: A Devotee's Mary
![[Marian
Library
Gallery]](/mary/gallery/images/fought20.jpg)
Mary Fought's collection of many Madonnas represents 80 years of popular devotional
images of Mary in the 20th century. The collection of more than 100 items was recently donated
to The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute. Mrs. Fought, a lifelong member
of Good Shepherd Episcolpal Church in Parkersburg West Virginia, called the collection her
labor of love.
Read more and see the layout of the collection on our gallery page at:
Commentary on Mary in various news articles from October 12 - 24, 2000.
The director and editors of Mary Page under the auspices of the International Marian
Research Institute do not necessarily endorse or agree with the events and ideas
expressed in this feature. Our sole purpose is to report on items about Mary gleaned from
a myriad of papers representing the secular press.
- Some of Russia's greatest art treasures, 16th century frescoes depicting scenes from the
life
of
the Virgin Mary, are in the Vologda region of northern Russia, the St. Peterburg Times reported
on October 20. Found in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in the small Russian
Orthodox Ferapontov Monastery 600 kilometers northeast of Moscow, the frescoes are the work
of Dionysius, one of Russia's greatest icon painters. Restoration of the interior of the church,
begun in the early 1980s, is about 80 percent complete and the Fresco Museum of Dionysius is
preparing a 500th annniversary celebration of the frescoes.
- Religious pilgrimages run by a trust to benefit children from all over the North East need
financial support from local people, the Newcastle UK Evening Chronicle said on October 19.
Each year 3,000 special needs children from the region go to Lourdes with funding provided by
HCPT's local groups.
- Beverly Donofrio and her recent book, Looking for Mary, were the subject of reviews in
the
Virginian-Pilot (Norkfolk, VA, October 15) and the Washington Post (October 22). The book
details her spiritual conversion following a trip to Medjugorje and "traces the spiritual adventures
of a forty-something woman who is eager to channel her talent for collecting Virgin Mary kitsch
into a more reputable form of admiration for the Holy Mother herself."
- Maria Esperanza Medrano de Bianchini, who first had visions of the Blessed Virgin
Mary in
Betania, Venezuela, in 1976, was scheduled to speak at the Bernalillo High School gym the
weekend of Oct 21-22, the Albuquerque Journal said on October 12. Members of Our Lady of
Sorrows church in Bernalillo organized the 71-year-old woman's visit. The Journal stated that
Maria Esperanza is recognized by the Church as a bona fide visionary and an area near the
mountain top at Betania is covered with thousands of plaques marking the spot where people
have been healed of their illnesses.
- Those who believe the Virgin Mary's image is on a Clearwater building say she has
instructed them to start a rosary factory, the St. Petersburg Times said on October 15. The
Catholic ministry running the Virgin Mary Building says a directive from the Madonna came
through Rita Ring, the group's Cincinnati visionary. Volunteer workers have been making an
average 1,400 rosaries a month since Mary's Rosary Factory opened in February. The rainbow
image on the side of the building, referred to as Our Lady of Clearwater, first appeared in 1996.
- Catholic authorities said the image in a Perth Amboy, NJ, window believed to resemble
the
Virgin Mary was a defect in the glass, the New York Times wrote on October 15. The image is
gone and the owner of the home said it disappeared shortly after the window was cleaned.
- Believers in the coastal city of Robstown claim an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe
appeared to them in a piece of plywood. Workers pulling up carpeting at St. Anthony's Church
discovered the image, the Houston Chronicle said on October 22.
- In Phoenix, an original Talavera mosaic from Puebla, Mexico of the Virgen de
Guadalupe is
featured in one of the city's newest McDonald's restaurants. The architecture blends with Aztec
inspired artwork by famed Mexican artist Enrique Avilez, the PR Newswire said on October 17.
"The artistic treatment of this McDonald's will create a permanent museum for residents of
South Phoenix and provide a source of pride in their history," said Argentinian native Julian
Claudio Nabozny, the restaurant's owner and a naturalized U.S. citizen.
- More than 20,000 persons flocked to a small church on San Antonio's south side over a
seven-day period to pay homage to a 32-inch statue of the Virgin Mary from Jalisco, Mexico, the
San Antonio Express-News said on October 15. The sugar-cane fiber and clay image of Our
Lady of San Juan de los Lagos first came to St. Lawrence's church five years ago and the annual
visits have transformed the church, Monsignor Adolfo Valdivia said. Attendance is up and 700
children are enrolled in catechism classes. The church has become the social center of the
neighborhood.
- Simultaneous conferences in Milwaukee in early November will tackle topics ranging
from
the death penalty and sweatshops to papal loyalty, confession and the Virgin Mary, the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said on October 21. For the third consecutive year, the reform-
minded Call to Action national conference and a regional Milwaukee Wanderer Forum of
staunchly orthodox Catholics will meet at sites just a few miles from each other. "Our Blessed
Mother and the Return to Holiness," is the topic of Cornelia Ferreira, author, lecturer and director
of Canadians for Faith and Family and Wanderer Forum speaker on November 4. Call to Action
keynoters will discuss "Friends of God, and Prophets: Toward an Inclusive Community" and
"Cowboys, Indians, Global Violence and the Gospel."
- Faith, Hope and Plastic is a "punchy, colourful and intensely skeptical True Lives
documentary about Bernadette Soubirous and the industry that has grown up around the visions
of the Virgin Mary" that Bernadette had 142 years ago, the London Sunday Times wrote on
October 15. Gerry Nelson's film focuses on 1,050 Irish men and women on a five-day
pilgrimage to Lourdes. Its cynicism does not extend to the Lourde's program for treatment of
whose who hope that visiting the Massabielle grotto will ease their suffering.
- As four students from Incarnate Word Academy in Parma Heights carried a statue of the
Virgin Mary along Euclid Avenue during the Columbus Day Parade in Cleveland, the mild
weather prompted one marcher to shout, "God takes care of the Italians," the Plain Dealer
reported on October 13. 110 marching units entertained the lunchtime crowds. The annual parade
was sponsored by the Federation of Italian American Societies of Northern Ohio, the Northeast
Ohio Italian-American Foundation and the business community.
- A New York Post headline, "Save the Schoolhouse Memorial," on October 17, topped a
story about a playground mural at the Shallow Intermediate School in Bensonhurst that is a
battleground in the war against religion. The principal says that the mural painted in memory of
27 deceased children from the heavily Hispanic neighborhood must be whitewashed over
because it depicts Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. "This mural represent no threat to the
Republic. Nor does it offend the First Amendment in any reasonable sense. It's an effort to make
the inevitable tragedies of life a little more understandable to young children. Folks who have
issues with that ought to get lives of their own," the story concluded.
Items Revisited
20th International Mariological Marian
Congress
Pope John Paul II: Homily - September
24, 2000
Act of Entrustment to Mary - October 8,
2000
Kevin Hanna: Mirror of
Hope
The Life of Mary
Visitation (Mary's Service)
Mary is a real, historical person who lived in Nazareth. She served, she cared. Post-Vatican II
Church documents tell us the following regarding Mary's service.
- During the Visitation the gifts of the Messiah flowed through her: the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit on Elizabeth, the joy of the future Precurser (cf. LK 1:41).
Read more at: The Life of
Mary – Visitation (Mary's Service)
Prayer Corner Requests
You are invited to help us pray for our prayer corner intentions.
Prayer Corner
The intentions of the Holy Father for November 2000 are posted at
http://home.mira.net/~apray/i98/index.htm
For more information on these intentions, see: Apostleship of
Prayer
See News Archive above
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