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In the culture and practice of some Christian churches — mainly, but not solely, the Roman Catholic Church — a Shrine to the Virgin Mary (or Marian shrine) is a shrine marking an apparition or other miracle ascribed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or a site on which is centered a historically strong Marian devotion. Such locales are often the destination of pilgrimages.
Some of the largest shrines arose from reported Marian apparitions to young and simple people on remote hilltops that had hardly been heard of prior to the reported apparition. The story of Saint Juan Diego's reported vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531 is similar to that of Saint Bernadette Soubirous' vision in 1858 of Our Lady of Lourdes. Both saints reported a miraculous Lady on a hilltop who asked them to request that the local priests build a chapel at the site of the vision. Both visions included a reference to roses and led to large churches being built at the sites. Like Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, Our Lady of Lourdes is a major Catholic symbol in France. Both visionaries were eventually declared saints.
Some of these shrines are visited by many pilgrims: Lourdes, with a population of around 15,000, receives about 5,000,000 pilgrims every year, and within France only Paris has more hotel rooms than Lourdes. Over 1,000,000 pilgrims per year visit the Black Madonna statue in the Chapel of Grace in Altötting, Germany, where for more than 500 years miracles have been attributed to praying to the Virgin Mary at that shrine.
Chennai, Madurai, Kerala, Coimbatore, India
Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kozhikode, Thrissur
Latvia, European Union, Russia, Sweden, Estonia
Lourdes, Jesus, Pope John Paul II, France, Pope Pius XII
Kraków, Warsaw, Polish language, Ukraine, Silesian Voivodeship
Jesus, Quran, Christianity, Mariology, Theotokos
France, Poland, Mexico, Spain, Portugal
Holy See, France, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fátima, Rome
Pope John Paul II, Roman Catholic Mariology, Holy See, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Jesus
Spanish language, Gibraltar, La Línea de la Concepción, Italian language, Jesus