Forty years ago the moving statues phenomenon raced through Ireland leaving in its wake a nation of believers, bewildered, sceptics and scientists all either accepting or seeking to debunk it, writes John Williams.

 

In 1985 Ireland was an anxiety state. There was high unemployment, lack of summer light and presence of potato blight. An abortion referendum in the past and a divorce referendum to come. And a terrible plane crash in Irish air space.

As the moving statues usually involved the Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes with a little supporting movement from other statues, the whole movement wouldn’t have started at all except for the fact that 1954 had been designated a Marian Year by Pope Pius. This lead to the proliferation of Marian Shrines in Ireland .

The first person to witness a moving statue was seven-year-old Elizabeth Flynn who said she went to pray the Hail Mary in the church in Asdee, Co Kerry on Valentine’s Day 1985. Elizabeth told how she saw Our Lord beckon to her and The Blessed Virgin move Her eyes. The seven-year-old told her 12-year-old sister who went to the Church and saw Our Lord move His hand in an upright fashion .

In Ballydesmond, Co Kerry, a woman was said to have fainted on seeing movement in the Church there. “If there’s a message it will come again and more than me will see it” was her only comment. Children also claimed they saw a statue moving in Ballydesmond. A man of 80 was said to have seen The Blessed Virgin blink three times.

On March 24, 1985, Monsignor Dermot O’Sullivan, the Catholic Dean of Kerry, was quoted as saying the moving statues of Asdee and Ballydesmond would not be accepted by the Church as miracles until all other possible explanations were thoroughly checked out.

Meanwhile, the Church would not encourage pilgrimage at Asdee or Ballydesmond. While accepting the sincerity of the people who claimed to see the statues move, the attitude of the Church had to be one of extreme caution and prudence and all natural explanations would have to be ruled out before signs were considered miraculous. The Monsignor said this would take a long period of testing and investigating.

One of the people whom the religious phenomenon concerned was Late Late Show host Gay Byrne. RTÉ’s flagship talk show despatched a team of investigators to Castleconnor in Sligo to meet four girls, two of who claimed to have witnessed an apparition of Our Lady and St Bernadette on the night of 2nd September 1985.
Colleen McGuinness, her sister Patricia and their cousin Mary McGuinness, as well as friend Mary Hanley, had walked a cousin of Mary Hanleys home and were returning when they noticed unusual cloud movement.

Looking up at the sky Mary Hanley froze and claimed to see the Blessed Virgin wearing a white veil, looking sad and so low in the sky she seemed in reach of the girls.
Mary was rooted to the spot in fear and Patricia had some difficulty pulling her off the spot on the road. Transfixed too after seeing the apparition, Colleen also had to be pulled in off the road. The other two girls did not witness the apparition. On arrival home, accompanied all the way by the image of the Virgin, Mary Hanley’s mother observed a halo around the girls.

Speaking on The Late Late Show the girls, all of whom were Secondary School students at the time, were sincere and believable and certainly genuine in their claim to have seen an 8-feet image of the Virgin and somewhat smaller St Bernadette.

Vast crowds followed on the heels of this vision and many apparitions were seen over the following nine nights. A temporary shrine was erected and prayers and hymns filled the night as the girls walked over the same ground as the night of the visions.

The Virgin’s face was seen on the moon, a red ball of fire and a halo were witnessed by hundreds. A boy saw a mist, then an image of Our Lady with joined hands that then vanished.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own