February 20: OUR LADY OF BOLOUGNE SUR MER
In the year 636, a ship without oars or sails came into the harbor of Boulogne. The ship bore a statue of Our Lady, and the citizens welcomed Mary to their city by erecting to her a shrine which reached its height of glory in the 12th Century.
Henry VIII is reported to have stolen the statue of Our Lady of Boulogne and taken it to England. After many negotiations, the French managed to get it back. The image had been stolen and hidden many other times, but always saved and returned.
World War II almost completely destroyed the statue. In modern times, four exact replicas of our Lady of Boulogne toured France for more than seven years as a symbol of French devotion to Mary. One of these was taken to Walsingham, England in 1948 and carried in procession by the “Cross-bearing pilgrimage” when many other statues and images of the Virgin visited England.
Boulogne was one of the most important Lady shrines of medieval France; among its noted pilgrims have been: Henry III, Edward II, the Black Prince, John of Gaunt. At the French Revolution, the statue was burnt to ashes and the church pulled down. A new statue was made in 1803 and pilgrimages began again. The image represents the Mother with the Child in her arms, standing in a boat, with an angel on either side. At the Marian Congress in Boulogne in 1938, a custom began to take replicas of this statue “on turn” in France and abroad. A branch of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Compassion at Boulogne has been established for the reconciliation of the Church of England.
The sanctuary church at Boulogne was badly damaged during World War II, and Mary’s image smashed; but the return, the “Great Return” of one of the copies of the statue which had been sheltered at Lourdes, took place in 1943, and the occasion will long be remembered by Mary lovers.
There is an ancient offshoot of this shrine at Boulogne-sur-Seine.
CLICK HERE TO DISCOVER HOW THE PILGRIM STATUE OF OUR LADY OF THE CAPE WAS FASHIONED AFTER THE "GREAT RETURN" TO BE PROCESSED TO THE 1947 MARIAN CONGRESS. THE MDM CONTINUES TO SPEARHEAD THESE PILGRIM STATUE VISITS TO THIS DAY.
From the Woman in Orbit - A Timeless Marian Treasure Compiled By Sr. Manetta Lamberty, S.C.C.
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