Sanctuary of Our Lady of Bistrica

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Twice the Black Madonna of Bistrica was hidden to save her, and twice she was found again. In 1545 a priest walled up the late-fifteenth-century wooden statue to keep it from Ottoman raiders and died with the secret; in 1588 a mysterious light revealed the hiding place, and after being concealed once more she was rediscovered in 1684. The Croatian parliament itself vowed her an altar in 1710, a fire during the building of the present church spared the statue and the high altar, and in 1935 she was crowned Queen of Croatia. Declared the nation's shrine in 1971, the hilltop sanctuary in the green Zagorje hills received Pope John Paul II in 1998, when half a million Croats gathered here for the beatification of Cardinal Stepinac, and a million pilgrims a year still climb its Way of the Cross to the Mother who would not stay hidden.