.- As Ireland grapples with high rates of depression and suicide, Irish filmmakers point to the Knock Shrine as a place of hope and healing.
“We want to put Our Lady, our Blessed Mother, front of stage for the Irish people and the world as a beacon of hope. We want this film to be a message for people that there is hope,” Aidan Gallagher, CEO of EWTN Ireland told CNA.
“Hope,” a new docudrama produced by EWTN, tells the story of the Knock apparition.
On a very rainy August 21, 1879, 15 official witnesses saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, angels, and Jesus Christ (as the lamb of God) on the south gable of the town church, which was named St. John the Evangelist. For a period of about two hours, a crowd gathered to adore the apparition and to pray the rosary. Despite the rainstorm, the ground around the gable did not get wet.
Unlike most other Marian apparitions, the Virgin Mary was silent the entire time and did not offer any sort of message or prophesy. Some have theorized that she was silent due to the cultural changes occurring in Ireland at the time–the oldest of the 15 witnesses could only speak the Irish language, and the youngest, who was only six years old at the time, was being taught only English.
Vatican officials found the apparition at Knock to be “trustworthy and satisfactory” after two separate commissions; in 1879 and again in 1936.
On average, 4,000 confessions take place each week at the shrine.
“At Knock people come to confession all the time. I call it our engine room — that’s where the miracles happen and the dynamic happens — in the confessional,” Gibbons said. “People that come to Knock wouldn’t even think about going to confession, but they see others going … it gives them such peace and hope and joy that they in turn then speak that to other people.”
“It is a place of hope, a place of peace, and a place of reconciliation. That is what Knock offers to people,” Fr. Gibbons said.
