First ever Marian miracle approved in Ireland

The Catholic Church in Ireland has for the first time recognized a miracle attached to the Knock Shrine, where a woman was cured of multiple sclerosis thirty years ago.

Marion Carroll had been bedridden for years until she was healed in 1989 during a blessing with a monstrance at the shrine. She had been taken to the shrine on a stretcher, as she was paralyzed. Her eyesight was also impaired, and she was epileptic.

“I recognize that Marion was healed from her long-standing illness while on pilgrimage in this sacred place,” Bishop Francis Duffy of Ardagh and Clonmacnois said in his homily during a Sept. 1, 2019 Mass at the shrine, located in Knock, about 20 miles north of Tuam.

While many visitors to the shrine have claimed cures or favors, this is the first cure which the Church in Ireland has recognized as miraculous.

Since her cure, Carroll has volunteered at the shrine, assisting pilgrims.

The Knock Shrine is built on the site of an 1879 apparition of the Virgin Mary, St Joseph, St John the Evangelist, angels, and the Lamb of God on the south gable of the town church. For a period of about two hours, a crowd gathered to adore the apparition and to pray the Rosary. Despite a rainstorm, the ground around the gable did not get wet.

Vatican officials found the apparition at Knock to be “trustworthy and satisfactory” after two separate commissions, in 1879 and in 1936. Shortly after the apparition, Knock became a site of pilgrimage. 

Adapted from CNA