Scarred statue of Mary that survived the Nagazaki A-Bomb now a symbol of Peace

When the atom bomb "Fat Boy" devastated Nagasaki 65 years ago today, one of the buildings reduced to rubble was the city's Urakami cathedral -- then among the largest churches in Asia.

The blinding nuclear flash that would claim more than 70,000 lives in the city also, in an instant, blew out the stained glass windows of the church, toppled its walls, burnt its altar and melted its iron bell.

But, in what local Christian followers have likened to a miracle, the head of a wooden Virgin Mary statue survived amid the collapsed columns and scorched debris of the Romanesque church flattened on August 9, 1945.

The appearance of the war-ravaged religious icon is haunting. The Madonna's eyes have become scorched, black hollows, the right cheek is charred, and a crack runs like a streaking tear down her face.

"When I first saw (the damaged statue), I thought the Virgin Mary was crying," said Shigemi Fukahori, a 79-year-old parishioner at the church who remembers the statue before the explosion that destroyed the cathedral that is called St Mary's in English.

"I thought it's as if the Virgin Mary is telling us about the misery of war by sacrificing herself, "Fukahori said, quietly gazing at the statue. "This is a significant symbol of peace which should be preserved forever."

The remains of the statue of the Virgin Mary have found a new home inside a rebuilt church, also called St Mary's, built on the same site, only 500 metres (1,640 feet) from the bomb's ground zero.

But the powerful relic has also traveled widely as a symbol of peace -- most recently to New York for a UN nuclear disarmament conference in May, when it was also taken to a mass at the city's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

On their way, the Nagasaki religious leaders also carried the statue to the Vatican, where it was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI, and to a ceremony in Guernica, Spain to mourn the victims of Nazi air attacks during World War II.

"We traveled overseas with the statue, with the idea that we would like to ask the Virgin Mary to act for peace," Joseph Mitsuaki Takami, the archbishop of Nagasaki, said in an interview with AFP.

Source: AFP Nagasaki, August 9, 2010

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