![]() Scepticism aside, two popes have visited Knock and two saints: Pope St John Paul, who visited in 1979 to mark the centenary of the apparitions St Teresa of Calcutta was there in June 1993, and Pope Francis visited last August. Prof Berman continued that “this of, course, is hearsay,” as was a statement he had heard some years previously “from a senior member of the Irish judiciary, to the effect that a solicitor of his aquaintance told him that his grandfather hired a magic lantern to Archdeacon Cavanagh during the week in question”. OUR LADY OF KNOCK ARCHIVEHe has also claimed that “there is a letter in the Tuam diocesan archive from a Michael McConnell from Belfast, who says that a friend of his called Constable McDermott, who had been stationed at Knock, had told him that the apparition had been produced by a magic lantern operated by a Protestant policeman stationed at Knock”. It also pointed to contradictions in witness statements. Sceptics have argued that, as the apparitions did not move or speak during the entire period they were seen on the church’s gable wall, it was most likely they resulted from from “the projection of a magic lantern slide”, as former Trinity College Dublin professor of philosophy David Berman put it in a 1979 article. It added that Mary O’Connell (formerly Beirne), in particular, had left “a most favourable impression.” ‘Magic lantern’ In their final report the 1936 Commission, as it became known, stated that all witnesses examined were “upright” and their testimonies “satisfactory”. He was five when the apparition took place, and had been lifted up by fellow witness Patrick Hill to see the vision. ![]() It examined the two surviving witnesses of the apparition living in Knock, Mary O’Connell (formerly Mary Beirne) then aged 86, as well as Patrick Byrne, then 71.Īs part of this inquiry, a special tribunal was set-up by the Archbishop of New York to formally question John Curry, a Knock witness then living in New York. Over a year later, in October 1880, Archdeacon Cavanagh had recorded 637 cures.Ī second inquiry into Knock was set up in 1935 by then Archbishop of Tuam Thomas Gilmartin. The first recorded cure at Knock after the apparitions - a deaf person recovering their hearing - took place 12 days later. ![]() She “did not return to behold the visions again after that, remaining at my house. He appeared to make nothing of what I said, and consequently he did not go.” I asked him or said, rather, it would be worth his while to go to witness them. ![]() On seeing the apparition McLoughlin first thought “that possibly the Archdeacon had been supplied with these beautiful figures from Dublin or somewhere else, and that he had said nothing about them but had left them in the open air.” ‘Beautiful things’Īfter looking at the apparition for about half an hour she “went to the priest’s house and told what I had beheld, and spoke of the beautiful things that were to be seen at the gable of the chapel. I said, as I now expressed, that it was St John the Evangelist, and then all the others present said the same – said what I stated.” She said “it was this coincidence of figure and pose that made me surmise, for it is only an opinion, that the third figure was that of St John, the beloved disciple of Our Lord, but I am not in any way sure what saint or character the figure represented. ![]()
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