The Marian Apparition That Saved the Forgotten Ones, by Kevin Wells

Today marks the 91st anniversary of an event that led to one of the greatest movements of rescue of the poor, humiliated and rejected in the history of the world. When the Blessed Mother visited a 13-year-old peasant girl in a tiny frozen-over Belgian village, the long-suffering fate of the universe of the forgotten ones began to shift.

As the Catholic Church calls to mind the poverty-stricken during Poverty Awareness Month, it is fitting to tell the story of the incomprehensible — but very true — events that unfolded when Our Lady visited a poor girl named Mariette Beco on a moonless winter night in 1933. Mary spoke just 91 words in her eight visits to the backwater of Banneux, Belgium. But it was those words — courteously spoken in a manner suited for a country girl — that spurred one of the greatest accounts in Church history of Our Lady’s intermediary work through a single man — Washington, D.C., native Venerable Aloysius Schwartz. …