Knock (from the Irish language Án Cnoc meaning The Hill) is a small town in County Mayo in Ireland where it is alleged that on August 21, 1879 the Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist appeared to local people. In the 20th century it became one of Europe's major Roman Catholic Marian shrines, alongside Lourdes and Fatima. It was visited by Pope John Paul II, a supporter of devotion to the Virgin Mary, in 1979.

Table of contents
1 The 'Apparition'
2 Reaction
3 The cultural context
4 The Pilgrimage Site
5 Knock today
6 The Prayer to 'Our Lady of Knock - Queen of Ireland'
7 See also
8 External links

The 'Apparition'

On the 21st August, 1879 (a wet Thursday evening, a fact that was of importance to descriptions of the event), at 8pm, fifteen people whose ages ranged from six years to seventy-five and included men, women, teenagers and children, witnessed what they claimed was an apparition of Our Lady, her husband St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist. The apparition, they claimed, occurred at the south gable end of the local small parish church, which had been built in 1828, one year before Catholic Emancipation. The appearance was described in contemporary accounts as having involving a blaze of what they called 'Heavenly light'. Behind the three, it was claimed, a plain altar appeared was a cross and a lamb (a traditional image of Christ, as reflected in the religious phrase The Lamb of God) with adoring angels. Mary was described as clothed in white robes with a brilliant crown on her head. Over the Virgin's forehead and above her crown she wore a beautiful full-bloom golden rose. She was described as "deep in prayer", with her eyes and hands raised towards Heaven. St. Joseph, also wearing white robes, stood on the Virgin's right. St. John the Evangelist was dressed in white vestments and resembled a bishop, with a small mitre. He appeared to be preaching and he held an open book in his left hand.

Those who witnessed the alleged apparition stood in the pouring rain reciting the traditional Marian meditative mantra-like prayer, the Rosary. Though the very rain was spilling down, the claimed the gable end of the church, where the supposed figures stood, remained completely dry.

Reaction

As with other claimed Marian apparitions the Roman Catholic Church was slow to accept the validity of what it was suggested had happened. A detailed inquiry was carried out, as had been the case with Lourdes and would also be the case with sites like Fatima. Two Roman Catholic commissions of inquiry took place, in 1879 and 1936. Eventually, amid some hostility within the local hierarchy, Knock was accepted under Catholic belief as a location of a Marian apparition and a pilgrimage site to which Catholic organisations, networks and parishes could travel.

The cultural context

Subequent sociologists, while neither accepting nor disputed what had allegedly occurred but seeking to understand its cultural context, noted the timing of the events, how as it Lourdes and Fatima the 'visitations' occurred at a time of immense cultural, social and economic change, and occurred to people whose traditional society was under threat from dramatic change. In the 1870s, Ireland was undergoing a period of dramatic upheaval. Some parts of the island had experienced the last waves of what proved to be a minor Famine but which nevertheless brought back memories of the Great Irish Famine of the late 1840s that had decimated the countryside.

The appearance of railways brought new travel opportunities and challenges to closeknit communities, while the 1870s saw the beginnings of land reform that would change Irish rural life, reform initially fought for through mass mobilisation and sometimes violence with organisations like Michael Davitt's Land League and through the radical political leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. (The infamous Land Agent Captain Boycott, whose communal oustracisation on account of his treatment of local tenantry in the late 1870s became a worldwide cause celebré and which gave the english language the verb to boycott - meaning 'to oustracise completely' - , was based in County Mayo only a few mile from Knock.) In a time of change, symbols like the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph (known together within Catholicism as the Holy Family) marked a reminder of stability and tradition in a society whose change many people found bewildering. Depending on whether one accepted the validity or the apparation or the religious beliefs underpinning it, it could be seen either as a dillusion by a marginalised traditional society clinging to old certainties, or in a Catholic religious context the appearance of the 'Mother of God' to people marginalised by society to show her support and offer her comfort.

The Pilgrimage Site

The growth of railways and the appearance of local and national newspapers fueled interest in what had up to then been a small Mayo village. Reports of 'strange occurrences in a small Irish village' were featured almost immediately in the international media, notably The Times (of London). Newspapers from as far away as Chicago sent reporters to cover the Knock phenomenon, while Queen Victoria asked her government in Dublin Castle to send her a report about the event. In later years Catholic nationalists used the apparition to symbolically challenge Queen Victoria and her descendants' position in Ireland using for Our Lady of Knock the title Queen of Ireland.

Knock today

Though it remained for almost 100 years a major Irish pilgrimage site, it established itself as a world religious site in large measure during the last quarter of the twentieth century, largely due to the work of its longterm parish priest, Monsignor James Horan. Horan presided over a major rebuilding of the site, with the provision of a new massive Basilica (the first in Ireland) alongside the old church, which could no longer cope with visitor numbers. In 1979, the centenary of the alleged apparition, Horan ensured that Pope John Paul II, himself a devotee of Mary, visited Knock Shrine during his Irish visit. Most controversially of all, Horan secured from Irish Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey millions of pounds of state aid to build a major airport near Knock. The project was condemned by critics in the media and the opposition, one of whom spoke of building the airport of a "foggy, boggy hillside". Contrary to the critics' expectation however, Knock Airport (now known as Horan International Airport after the late Monsignor who founded it) became a commercial success, drawing not just pilgrims as passengers but also becoming the air-gateway for the entire Connacht region.

Conservative Catholics, critical of Ireland's embracing of the liberal agenda in the 1990s (including the introduction of divorce and the decriminalisation of homosexuality), have used ceremonies at Knock to urge political campaigns on issues to do with 'family life', abortion and contraception. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, on a a visit to the Shrine in June 1993 spoke on the issue of abortion, as has conservative family values politician Dana Rosemary Scallon and visiting religious leaders from around the world.

Knock Shrine now attracts over one and a half million visitors annually and is the west of Ireland's major visitor attraction.

The Prayer to 'Our Lady of Knock - Queen of Ireland'

A number of prayers are associated with Knock. One of the most widely known is the following:

Our Lady of Knock Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to your people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow. You have inspired countless pilgrims to pray with confidence to your Son, remembering His promise; “Ask and your shall receive, seek and you shall find. ”Help me to remember that we are all pilgrims on the road to heaven. Fill me with love and concern for my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who live with me.Comfort me when I am sick or lonely or depressed. Teach me how to take part ever more reverently in the holy Mass. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death. Amen. Our Lady of Knock, pray for us.

See also

External links