I have never seen the Virgin, but I hear her

It is reasonable to think that John Paul II possessed the gift of an extraordinary perception of the supernatural. As he spoke about Marian apparitions, a member of his entourage asked him if he had ever seen the Virgin. The pope's answer was frank: "No, I have never seen the Virgin, but I hear her. "

As the Cardinal Deskur (a Polish prelate) told us, Karol Wojtyla found the diocesan seminary almost empty when he was appointed archbishop of Cracow, so he made a promise to the Virgin: "I will do many pilgrimages on foot to your shrines, great and small, nearby and distant, according to the number of vocations that you will give me each year.” The seminary suddenly began to revive itself and counted nearly five hundred students when the archbishop left Krakow for the See of Peter.

"My way of conceiving devotion to the Mother of God has undergone a transformation. In the past I was already convinced that Mary leads us to Christ, but now I also begin to understand that Christ also leads us to his Mother."(John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of My Priestly Ordination, Paris 1996)

Source: Marie Reine