Sanctuary of Our Lady of La Salette

Image: Wikimedia Commons

On September 19, 1846, in the alpine pastures high above the village of La Salette, two young cowherds, Maximin Giraud, eleven, and Mélanie Calvat, fourteen, saw a globe of light open in a small ravine beside a dried-up spring, and within it a Beautiful Lady seated with her face in her hands, weeping. Come closer, my children, do not be afraid, she said, I am here to tell you great news, and weeping all the while she spoke of her Son, of Sundays forgotten and God's name profaned, calling her people to conversion, first in French, then in the children's own dialect, before entrusting a secret to each and vanishing up the slope. After five years of rigorous investigation the Bishop of Grenoble recognized the apparition in 1851, and today the basilica stands at 1,800 meters amid a ring of peaks, tended by the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, the second most visited shrine in France after Lourdes, where on this very anniversary pilgrims keep vigil with the weeping Mother who came to call her people home.