We've updated our answer to a reader's question: What is the stand of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the writing and messages of Mrs. Vassula Ryden? What are the regulations regarding publication of presumed private revelations?

We've also posted an article on by Fr. René Laurentin: Marian Apparitions: Facts and Theological Meaning on our Resources menu. 

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New Exhibit

The Marian Library is currently exhibiting Religious Folk Art from the Southwest, Faces of Mary and Saints, by Lydia Garcia of Taos, New Mexico.  Using retablos and altar screens, Garcia creates folk art unique to the Spanish colonial Southwest.  She sees her art as a tool of God's love and compassion and a way of giving herself back to God.  Upon signing the back of each piece, she complements with prayers or humorous explanations.  This exhibit continues through July 26; hours 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday.

Digitized photos of the items on display in the Marian Library can be seen under Current Exhibit in our Gallery section.

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International Marian Research Institute Summer Courses

Summer courses have been offered since June 11.  See the course offerings for the summer academic session of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute at: Summer Schedule.

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Personal thoughts and reflections about Mary 
from our readers 

We've added a section to our Research and Publications section showing selected personal comments from our readers about the Virgin Mary.  Click here to see comments received within the past month.  From this page, feel free to submit your own personal thoughts on Mary.  

We also encourage our readers to submit their opinions on various styles of Marian Art through an on-line art survey.

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From ZENIT

Not posted this week. Expect an update to this section next week.

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.

Mary in the secular news from June 27 through July 7

Elephant dung is one of the ingredients in Chris Ofili’s paintings, seen in his new exhibit, Freedom Day One, at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, and "there is something almost edibly delectable" about them, the London Daily Telegraph wrote on July 3. Elephant dung was used in Ofili’s painting, The Holy Virgin Mary, which created "an unholy rumpus involving accusations of blasphemy and protests from Mayor Giuliani" when it was shown in New York a few years ago. The elephant dung is, in fact, the least important of Ofili’s devices, the reviewer said.

At least 19 Polish pilgrims died and 32 were injured when a bus flipped over at a roundabout on the way to Medjugorje, a shrine to the Virgin Mary in southeast Bosnia, on July 1, The Herald Sun reported the following day.

Nancy Fowler, who said the Virgin Mary appeared to her monthly at her home in Conyers, GA., during the 1990's, still lives in the home where the masses gathered to hear messages from the Virgin Mary, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution said on June 29. She stopped sharing her messages in 1998 and is working on two books, a compilation of her testimonies and an autobiography. A lawsuit seeking control of the money her followers donated to Our Loving Mother’s Children, the nonprofit agency her friends started, has lingered in Rockdale Superior Court for years but is expected to go to trial in October.

Crowds waiting for hours to get a good view of the canonization of Juan Diego in Mexico City, where the altitude is 7,000 feet and the subtropical sun beams strongly in the thin air, will need drinking water so city authorities have decided to make a tactical alliance with the street traders they have spent years trying to get rid of and will license them to sell bottles of clean water during the three days in July Pope is there, the London Daily Telegraph said June 29 on page one. A story on page two, titled "Juan Diego: the making of a saint," tells about the Indian Juan Diego who in 1531 saw a series of visions of the Virgin Mary. On June 21, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that because of frail health, Pope John Paul II has scaled back the activities planned for his fifth visit to Mexico in late July. The visit will concentrate on the pope’s mission to canonize the first Indian saint in the Americas. Canceled were plans for a dinner with Mexican bishops, a Mass in Mexico City to beatify martyrs from the southern state of Oaxaca and a visit to the presidential residence.

Rev. Peter Avgeropoulos has witnessed a miracle: The new Cathedral of Annunciation of the Virgin Mary reborn from the ashes of his ruined Parkdale church, the Toronto Sun said on June 28. Two years and barely three months ago, Avgeropoulos stood outside in the rain as the Greek Orthodox church was reduced to smoking rubble; now its been rebuilt, at a cost of $4 million.

A missionary priest from Kenya who briefly stayed at Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians church in Woodside, Queens, was charged with sexually abusing a 12-year old boy, casting light on another aspect of the church’s sexual abuse scandal: foreign priests who fall through the cracks, and among them, foreign missionary priests who have even less supervision, the New York Times said on June 27. The priest was the third to be arrested on charges of sexual abuse committed in the Brooklyn diocese in a little more than a month.

How Polish is Polonia? So Polish that you’ll see pickle patches behind the houses and field shrines honoring the Virgin Mary at the most remote rural crossroads of the area east of Stevens Point, the Wisconsin State Journal wrote on July 7. The Pope himself came for lunch to Kezeske’s tavern when he was the archbishop of Krakow and visited the Felician sisters at St. Clare’s convent in Polonia in 1976.

The modest, 15-room motel rests inconspicuously amid neighborhood homes, the back yard decorated with lawn chairs, hanging mobiles and a Virgin Mary statue inside an upturned bathtub "altar." Just a few blocks away, rows of brightly colored, elaborate resorts vie for customers along major roadways. But the family-owned Stanton Motel, run by 97-year-old Alta Stanton, has a steady flow of business. Stanton and her husband built the first part of it in 1948 to provide lodging for customers who sought lodging when they stopped for gas at his two gas stations. Reported July 6 by the Madison, WI Capital Times.

Visitors at Transfiguration Church stared in awe as they made their way up to the base of a 33-foot-tall stainless-steel statue of the Virgin Mary, the Chicago Daily Herald said on June 27. Throughout the week, parishioners and visitors came to the Wauconda church to stand before the 4-ton Our Lady of the New Millennium statue, which was spending two weeks in the parking lot of the church before moving on to a parish in Waukegan. The touring statue, commissioned by Carl Demmer and blessed by Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Francis George, travels from town to town, stopping at Catholic churches in the Chicago area since its construction three years ago.

Some people have seen religious statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary shed real tears. Some have been moved to devotion by an image of Jesus on the side of a Cape Breton Tim Horton’s, while others saw only a water stain. St. John’s Mayor Andy Wells sees the image of Coun. Paul Sears in a painting meant to capture the history of the capital city’s fire department. What’s next? Of all of the petty claims and puerile arguments to have spun out of St. John’s City Council in recent years, this is one of the most bizarre, St. John’s Telegram (CanWest Interactive) said July 6.

Ministers of culture of Russia and Germany attended the official farewell ceremony as 111 fragments of stained glass from the Virgin Mary Church (Marienkirche) in Frankfurt on Oder were sent from St. Petersburg to Germany, the News Bulletin (Interfax Northwest)said on June 24. The Marienkirche stained glass was made in the 14^th century to decorate the altar of the church. The pictures were dismantled in 1943 when the allies started bombing Frankfurt, taken to Potsdam and then brought to the Hermitage in 1946. The stained glass fragments are the first works of art Russia is transferring to a foreign country under the new law on trophy art.

A 600-year-old statue of the Virgin May is one of several works being prepared for the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Parramatta, the Parramatta Advertiser said on July 3. The wood-carved Madonna was bought in Germany with a $73,000 gift from an anonymous donor. Sister Rosemary Crumlin, a freelance art curator who found the statue and escorted it back to Australia, said it had been carved between 1390 and 1430. Carved of lindenwood, painted and gilded, the statue features a strong, smiling Madonna holding a Christ-child and an apple. This reflected medieval theology of Mary as the second Eve, the mother of Jesus Christ who was thought to be the new Adam, Sr. Rosemary said. Work on the new cathedral, which replaces the building gutted by fire in 1996, begins later in July.

Think of the Virgin Mary and the mind conjures up countless images of her dressed in blue. But the Mother of Christ quite possibly never wore blue, the Melbourne Age said on June 24. Why the ultramarine robes? The answer is in English scientist and author Philip Ball’s fascinating new book, "Bright Earth - the Invention of Colour." Throughout the Middle Ages, Badakshan, at the headwaters of the river Oxus in what is now Afghanistan, was virtually the only source of the rare blue stone lapis lazuli from which the rich and alluring pigment ultramarine was lovingly extracted. To medieval artists the wondrous pigment from "beyond the sea" was a marvel to be used in painting only the most revered of subjects, both because of its short supply and great cost.

Sassoferrato’s Madonna in Prayer, currently on display at the National Gallery of Victoria, is a luminous example from the 17^th century of the legacy of this tradition. The Madonna wears robes of rich ultramarine.

The Virgin Mary appears on the 13^th of every month, just after lunch, to William Kamm, a former Wollongong bank worker, on a squalid, dusty patch of ground out the back of Nowra, in a clearing bulldozed from the subtropical rainforest, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote on June 22. Some see the sun spinning, but the reporter was among those who has not seen her or the spinning sun. On the same day the Herald wrote about Kamm’s apparitions and the Order of St. Charbel he established after the Virgin Mary began speaking to him. Also on June 22, the Sydney Daily Telegraph told of William Kamm’s "rocky path" as he defies a Vatican-approved decree outlawing his movement. "The Little Pebble," a name he said the Virgin gave him to protect his real identity, claims the Virgin Mary first spoke to him during Easter, 1968.

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