The French Still Love You

On September 8, 1914, the feast of the Nativity of Mary, 23 year-old Marcelle Lanchon claimed to have had her first apparition of the Blessed Virgin, in the Our Lady of the Armies Chapel, on the very same day that the Virgin also stopped the Germans on the Marne, at the gates of Paris. The visionary, who later took the name of Marie-France when she became a consecrated virgin in the Pious Union of Worshippers of the Sacred Heart that she founded, transmitted a prayer for France: "My Son, forgive the French, they still love you since they have never stopped loving me..." She also gave a promise on behalf of the Virgin: "If, in union with my Divine Son, I like all the nations which he redeemed with his Blood, see how much I especially cherish your dear country... My Son wishes that you make images and statues representing me and call upon me by the name of Our Lady of France. If someone answers this new desire of his Divine Heart, France will become particularly mine again. I will take it forever under my maternal protection and my Son will be happy to bestow abundant blessings on France." Bishop Roland Gosselin, bishop of the dioceses, gave official approval of the Pious Union of Worshippers of the Sacred Heart and made it possible to print the image of "Mary Queen of France" as well as the prayer revealed during the apparitions, but there was never a final canonical judgment on these facts which are a little forgotten today.