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Post by loughcrew on Sept 24, 2009 8:02:52 GMT
I am going to Belgium shortly and whilst there I intend visiting the Marian Shrine at Beauraing in the far south of the country, you never hear of pilgrimages going to there or to Banneux from Ireland and I am wondering whether anyone from this site has ever been there? www.theotokos.org.uk/pages/approved/appariti/beaurain.html
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 5, 2011 12:48:52 GMT
There is an interesting discussion of Beauraing and the other contemporary Belgian apparition site, Banneux, in Fr Michael O'Carroll's memoirs. He met one of the Belgian visionaries but I can't remember from which site. He used to go there into his 80s to assist the sick at the shrine.
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Post by loughcrew on Nov 5, 2011 14:53:47 GMT
I visited Beauraing this time last year on a Sunday afternoon. It is only a ten minute walk from the railway station to the shrine, on the way you pass the old parish church which has a nice interior in comparison to many Belgian churches whose interiors were destroyed in the reordering whcih took place post Vatican II. The shrine was busy with bus loads of German pilgrims at the time. There is a fairly nondescript basilica next to shrine of Notre Dame de Beauraing where Mass is celebrated in the afternoon and repositary where medals and souvenirs can be purchased. I am glad that I took the time to visit Beauraing and I hope to visit Banneux soon.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 7, 2011 21:00:21 GMT
CATHOLIC HERALD reports the death of the Banneux visionary Mariette Beco. She seems very impressive, to judge by the report. www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/12/07/visionary-who-reported-eight-apparitions-of-mary-dies-aged-90/EXTRACT Mariette led a very quiet life after the apparitions and did not make any further public comments. In 2008, the year of the official ceremonies of the 75th anniversary of the apparitions, she asked Fr Joseph Cassart, then rector of the shrine, to publish a letter in which she made her final statement about the apparitions. She said: “I was no more then a postman who delivers the mail. Once this has been done, the postman is of no importance any more.” Mariette reported her first apparition on the evening of Sunday, January 15, as she stood at the kitchen window in her home in Banneux. It was then that she said she saw the Virgin Mary beckon to her from the garden but her mother was afraid and stopped her daughter from going outside. Seven apparitions followed, during which Our Lady of Banneux said: “I am the Virgin of the Poor” and “I come to relieve suffering.” END OF EXTRACT Here is the shrine website: www.banneux-nd.be/gb/accueil.gb.htm
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Post by loughcrew on Dec 12, 2011 11:58:57 GMT
Banneux is slightly less accessible than Beauraing because it is not close to a railway line but in my opinion the whole Walloon area of Belgium on a line stretching from Tournai in the east to Liege in the west and all points south of that line are very rich in Catholic heritage and rewards any pilgrimage paid to there so much so that I am often puzzled by those who feel obliged to visit sites much further afield in search of their spiritual travels and that is why I will keep going back there. The northern Flemish speaking part of Belgium is also worth the trouble but in some parts, particularly in Leuven or Louvain with it's long connection to Irish Catholic formation at the time of the Reformation and afterwards and in Antwerp which I had such high hopes but found it to be a bit of a spiritual desert so many of the old city churches have closed or changed use but yet somewhere like Kortrijk is vibrantly Catholic in the amount of nice churches open to the public.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 12, 2011 22:31:55 GMT
Interesting point about Wallonia given that in the C19 and for much of the C20 the perception was that Wallonia was more secularised and less Catholic than Flanders (partly because it industrialised earlier). Flanders' secularisation has been more recent and more precipitate - one symbol of it BTW is that RORATE reports the University at Leuven is junking most of its remaining formal links to the Church.
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