Publish my glory!

The Shrine of Pellevoisin in central France, a site of Marian apparitions, has a new fresco depicting the coronation of the Virgin Mary. It was inaugurated and blessed on January 10, 2021, by Archbishop Beau of Bourges. This fresco will be a memorial to the recent pilgrimage of The M of Mary attended by thousands of pilgrims in the summer of 2020, which covered hundreds of kilometers across France and ended at the Shrine of Our Lady of Mercy in Pellevoisin.

The idea for the painting came from Father Laurent Flichy, rector of Our Lady of Pellevoisin, and Brother Jean-Baptiste Garrigou, an Orthodox monk and artist who works at the Saint Jean Damascène workshop. It was at the closing of the M of Mary pilgrimage on September 12, 2020, that together they conceived the idea of representing the arrival of the pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at Pellevoisin. They said: "When the socio-economic situation is so bleak and even so disturbing, one must pay attention to the presence of God, and to Revelation. Even if the world were to turn into chaos, we must remain above all connected to God’s Revelation, and that is why this fresco is such a good witness of our faith."

The fresco, painted on an external wall but protected by a canopy, is depicted in ochre, yellow, green, and blue hues. In the upper part we can see angels glorifying God; in the center, God the Father, incarnated in the Son, crowns the Blessed Virgin. Mary is represented with a childlike face "because she is constantly renewed by the Holy Spirit," explains Brother Jean-Baptiste. Three rays, symbolizing the Trinity, descend upon them. The scene is enclosed in an oval-shape aureola called a mandorla in iconography. On one side of this mandorla stands Saint John the Apostle, on the other we see Saint Mary Magdalene: both were witnesses of the Passion of Christ. They contemplate the coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At their feet, the Archbishop of Bourges is represented in the act of consecrating the diocese. Three people follow—the Lord's poor, who represent the faithful and also the pilgrims present at the closing of the pilgrimage of the M of Mary on September 12, 2020.

This fresco evokes the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at Pellevoisin in 1876. Her most famous message to the young seer Estelle Faguette was: Publish my glory!

Adapted and translated from: Famille Chrétienne