Apparition
Apparition of Our Lady of Šiluva
Church-approved Marian apparition · Šiluva, Samogitia, Archdiocese of Kaunas, Lithuania, 1608
In 1608, in a country where the Catholic parish of Šiluva had been suppressed for two generations, shepherd children saw a young woman standing on a rock in the fields, holding a child and weeping. Asked why she wept, she is remembered to have answered that once her Son was worshipped in that place, and now it is ploughed and sown. The Catholic church of Šiluva was restored, and the Holy See confirmed the veneration: Pope Pius VI confirmed the authenticity of the apparition by decree of 17 August 1775, and granted the image a canonical coronation on 8 September 1786.
Background
Šiluva is one of the earliest apparitions in Europe to receive papal confirmation, and the events were witnessed by Calvinists as well as Catholics in a district that had passed to the Reformation. The Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Chapel of the Apparition mark the site; Šiluva remained a rallying point of Lithuanian Catholic identity through the Soviet period, and Pope John Paul II prayed there in 1993. The great pilgrimage is kept in early September around the feast of Mary's Nativity.
Location
Šiluva, Samogitia, Archdiocese of Kaunas
Country
Lithuania
Approved status
Approved
Year of apparition
1608
Visionaries
- shepherd children of Šiluva
Subject
marian
Decision year
1775
Content subtype
approved_apparition
Decision authority
Pope Pius VI