Assumption of Mary
The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Spiritual Guidance
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The Blessed Virgin Mary
Marian titles and the Church-approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Mary is invoked as the gate of heaven because heaven's King entered the world through her, and because her intercession opens the way for the pilgrim Church that follows him.
Mary, in the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.
Mary invoked as the one who, by her intercession, patiently unties the knots of sin, difficulty, and broken relationships in the lives of her children.
A title of devotion, not a defined dogma: Mary is invoked as Mediatrix because her maternal intercession is wholly at the service of the one mediation of Christ, from which it draws all its power.
The morning star rises before the sun and announces it; Mary is invoked under that name because her appearing in the history of salvation announces Christ, the true light of the world.
Mary is honored as the Mother of God because the one she bore is the eternal Son of God made man. This is the most fundamental of all Marian titles.
Mary is honoured as Mother of the Church because the mother of Christ the Head is also mother of his Body: she was given to the disciple at the foot of the Cross and prayed with the apostles as the Church was born at Pentecost.
An invocation of the Litany of Loreto that praises Mary under the image of the rose: the flower of the enclosed garden, beautiful, fragrant and, in the medieval reading, without thorns.
Mary invoked as the help and defense of the Christian people, a title given fresh prominence by Saint John Bosco, who made it the patronal title of his Salesian work.
Mary invoked for the whole African continent from the basilica above the bay of Algiers, whose sanctuary carries the prayer that she intercede for Christians and for Muslims alike.
Protectress of the Dominican people, venerated at Higüey in a sixteenth-century painting of the Nativity in which the Virgin kneels in adoration before her newborn Son.
Mary venerated under the title of the small dark image of the Immaculate Conception found by fishermen in the Paraíba River, principal patroness of Brazil.
Mary venerated as the patroness of Cuba under the title of Charity, from the image found floating in the Bay of Nipe and enshrined at El Cobre.
Patroness of Bolivia, venerated in a wooden image carved by an Andean sculptor for his own people and enshrined on the shore of Lake Titicaca.
Patroness of Venezuela, honoured at Guanare, where a minute image of the Virgin and Child is kept as a relic of the events by which the Cospes people were drawn to baptism.
Patroness of Asturias, venerated in a cave sanctuary in the Picos de Europa that Asturians associate with the beginnings of the Christian recovery of the peninsula.
Mary venerated through the ancient icon enshrined at the Jasna Góra monastery in Poland, known as the Black Madonna and honored as Queen of Poland.
Principal patroness of Puerto Rico, venerated in an image of the Virgin holding the sleeping Christ Child — the sleep of a child in his mother's arms taken as the picture of trust in God's providence.
The Black Madonna of the Chapel of Grace in the Benedictine abbey of Einsiedeln, one of the oldest continuously visited Marian pilgrimages north of the Alps.
Mary venerated under the title given at her 1917 apparitions to three shepherd children at Fátima, Portugal.
Mary venerated under the image enshrined at Genazzano, Italy, invoked by those who seek wisdom and right judgment in the decisions of life.
Mary venerated at Champion, Wisconsin, the site of the first and only approved Marian apparition in the United States.
Patroness of the Americas. Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1531 at Tepeyac, leaving her image miraculously imprinted on his tilma.
Mary venerated at Kibeho in Rwanda under the name Nyina wa Jambo, Mother of the Word, at the only Marian apparition site in Africa whose events have been recognised by the local bishop.
Mary venerated under the silent apparition at Knock, Ireland, where she appeared with Saint Joseph, Saint John, and the Lamb upon an altar.
Mary venerated as the weeping Mother who appeared at La Salette, France, calling her people to conversion, prayer, and the keeping of the Lord's Day.
The national Marian shrine of Vietnam, whose devotion arose among Catholics hiding in the forest during persecution and which has accompanied the Vietnamese Church through two centuries of suffering.
Mary honored in the Holy House of Loreto, revered as the home of Nazareth where the Annunciation took place and the Word became flesh.
Mary venerated under the title given at her 1858 apparitions at Lourdes, where she declared, 'I am the Immaculate Conception.'