Faith has not only been protected by miracles but has grown as a result of them as well. Many conversions can be traced to the influence of the supernatural and in fact are some of the spiritual fruits that are assessed in declaring phenomena worthy of belief. Nine million baptisms in Mexico City alone in the seven or eight years following the events in Guadalupe in 1531 speak to this important role, as accounted by Franciscan priest and early historian of New Spain Toribio de Benavente Motolinia in 1541.
Countless stories of conversions involving the Miraculous Medal given to St. Catherine Labouré in a vision on November 27, 1830, attest to this as well. In perhaps the most famous account from 1842, Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne, an anti-Catholic Jew, befriended a baron in Rome and began wearing a Miraculous Medal as a simple test. While waiting for his friend in the church Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He then quickly converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and began a ministry for the conversion of Jews.
Another prime example, this one without Church approval, occurred in 1944 in Mississippi, when Claude Newman was imprisoned for a shooting and was sentenced to death. Given a Miraculous Medal to wear by his cellmate, he later had a glowing vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who advised him to summon a priest. His conversion quickly followed, and the night before his execution, he celebrated with other prisoners as he awaited his eternal reward.
The spiritual fruits of a miracle can take a more concrete form. Some of the largest churches in the world, for example, are built as a result of holy visions. Four of the twelve largest church buildings in the world (by square footage) have their origins in appearances of the Mother of God: the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in India, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Nuestra Señora de la Aparecida in Brazil, and Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. One of the great churches of Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore was built after an apparition of Our Lady of the Snows in 358, according to pious tradition. Legend says that she appeared to both Pope Liberius and a wealthy childless couple who then donated the money for construction after seeing a floor plan of the future church outlined in snow on a hill. Although Pope Sixtus III13 did not include the story when he rededicated the basilica a few centuries later and the reference to the legend (and the title Sanctae Mariae ad Nives, “Our Lady of the Snows”) was removed in the 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar,14 the faithful still honor the miraculous story when, during the memorial feast day, white rose petals are dropped in a snow-like shower from the dome of the Chapel of Our Lady.
The fact that the church of Santa Maria Maggiore resulted from a vision is far from unique. A great number of the 2,500 reported Marian apparitions throughout history have involved the request that a chapel, a church, or a sanctuary be built in Our Lady’s honor. In “the Great Event” of the apparitions in Guadalupe in 1531, according to the earliest account, the Nican Mopohua, Our Lady asks St. Juan Diego:
I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; listen there to their lamentations; and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows.
Some of the other apparition events around the world that gave inspiration to the building of shrines are worthy of belief, and others are legends that sprung up later. Still other origin stories are based on oral tradition and were put into writing at a much later date.
For example, one of the great pilgrimage sites in Spain, Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, originating in a miracle and housing an ancient jasper Marian image on a column, did not always recognize Our Lady under this title. According to the legend relating to the apostle St. James the Greater and his travels in Spain, on January 2 in the year 40, he was disheartened with his lack of success in proclaiming the gospel in Caesaraugusta (present-day Zaragoza) by the river Ebro, when he saw Mary (still alive at the time) miraculously appear on a pillar, comforting him and calling him to return to Jerusalem. The first written mention of the Virgin of Zaragoza comes from a bishop in the middle of the twelfth century, and Zaragoza’s co-cathedral’s name did not originally include a reference to El Pilar, being called Santa Maria Mayor. In 1296, Pope Boniface VIII conferred an indulgence on pilgrims visiting this shrine but still without mention of Our Lady of the Pillar. One of the legal councils of Zaragoza first wrote about Our Lady under this title in 1299, promising safety and privileges to pilgrims who came to visit the shrine. In 1456, Pope Calixtus III issued a bull encouraging pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Pillar and confirming the name and the miraculous origin. So, despite the lack of early extant texts about the miracle story and the name of this devotion, the enduring tradition delivers the story to us today.
One of the greatest miracle stories in the history of the Catholic Church comes from the tradition surrounding a shrine itself being legendarily miraculous. The Holy House of Loreto (Santa Casa di Loreto) is reputed to be the actual former home of the Virgin Mary. The legend recounts that in 1291, when the house was threatened by Muslims, it was carried by angels through the air and deposited in Trsat, a suburb of Rijeka, Croatia. Later, in 1294, angels carried it again across the Adriatic Sea to Loreto. Since the fourteenth century, this small house, surrounded by the Basilica della Santa Casa, has been a major place of pilgrimage — visited by many saints and popes — and healing miracles.
Many of these apparition-based churches play a major role in the lives of the faithful around the world. They serve as some of the most frequented destinations for pilgrimages. Each year ten million people go to Mexico City to venerate the miraculous tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe, five million visit Lourdes in France, and four million make the trip to Fátima, Portugal. Since 1981, more than thirty million pilgrims have gone to the alleged apparition site of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such numbers seem to indicate that the miraculous continues to play an active role in the life of the Church.
The Faith has grown and developed throughout the ages with the influence of the supernatural. Miracles have helped foster an increase in devotions as well as the spread and acceptance of specific Marian dogmas (e.g., the Immaculate Conception in the case of Lourdes). Many devotions and devotionals claim supernatural origins by virtue of referencing an originating Marian apparition. The Rosary is legendarily attributed to an apparition to St. Dominic in 1208, and St. Simon Stock is said to have received the first brown scapular from Our Lady in 1251 in Aylesford, England. Other colors of scapulars have their own legendarily miraculous beginnings. The most popular Catholic medal in circulation continues to be the Miraculous Medal, whose divine design was conferred during the apparitions received by St. Catherine Labouré in Rue du Bac, France, in 1830. Also according to legend, the creation of the popular St. Michael Prayer is attributed to Pope Leo XIII’s response to a vision he experienced in which the Lord gave permission to the devil to do what he wanted to humanity during the twentieth century. While the troubles around the world in that century seem to support such an occurrence, the documentation surrounding it is in fact lacking.
Most of us do not find ourselves surrounded by the great miracles recounted to us from an earlier age. The saints provide an excellent example of how to follow Christ in our ordinary, everyday lives, but many displayed some mystical gifts that appear far from ordinary, whether it was seeing visions or bearing the wounds of Christ. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) relates the importance of the miracles of the saints:
Through God’s saints miracles and salutary examples are put before our eyes that we might imitate the life and customs of the saints and be stirred up to love God and foster piety.15
In addition to honoring these miracle-working saints on feasts throughout the year, we celebrate our Church’s great moments of divine intervention throughout the Roman Calendar with commemorations for Divine Mercy, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of Fátima, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The role of miracles has extended beyond impacting the devotional life of the lay faithful. A number of religious orders have their roots in divine inspiration received by their founders. On August 1, 1218, the Virgin Mary, later honored under the title of Our Lady of Ransom (or Our Lady of Mercy), is said to have appeared to St. Peter Nolasco, to his confessor, St. Raymund of Pennafort, and to King James of Aragon and through these three men established a work