"Do not be afraid, my child, I am the Blessed Virgin Mary"

In 1686, a news item shook the village of Celles (France): Four women had violently beaten a priest. The victim took the case to court and obtained justice.

On May 28, 1686, between eight and nine o'clock a.m., a young peasant boy named John Courtilh, was praying the Rosary on his way back from the fields, when he saw a "white pigeon" in front of him. As he arrived at his farm, the boy saw the bird change into "a girl dressed in white, about six or seven years old," near a fountain (statement of July 21, 1686). In his second testimony (July 28, 1686), John said he first saw the pigeon "three times in front of him" then the girl "five or six steps from him."

The boy took fright and was about to run away when he heard, "Do not be afraid, my child, I am the Blessed Virgin Mary." He knelt, and so did the apparition. "Warn the people to change their lives and do eight processions. The people should convert, otherwise they will lose their souls... Continue serving your father and your mother as you have done."

The apparition also said that the four women responsible for causing the public scandal had to do penance. She asked John to leave his spade near the fountain—when he would return for it, he would see a "sign" on the handle. John quickly went back to the farm. He sent his brother and sister to go retrieve his spade, and they found it "standing upright, with three oak leaves forming a cross." The four women made amends for their wrongs, and processions were organized to the place of the apparition.

At the beginning of July, the Virgin appeared to John a second time, in his room: "You have done what I asked and have done it well. The water from the fountain will be good. The people have changed their lives and are becoming much better," she told him.

A commission of inquiry recorded 28 "cures" attributed to the water from the fountain. In October 1686, a second investigation mentioned seven new cures. A chapel was built and blessed on September 8, 1695. The shrine attracts faithful from the whole region and even Spain.

According to the Dictionnaire des Apparitions by Fr. René Laurentin, Fayard 2007