Paul Keenan
Paul Keenan examines the history of Knock as a place of healing
Since 1879 numerous cures and favours have been attributed to Our Lady of Knock. In the beginning, the cures were mainly received for illnesses and physical problems, but today people report receiving favours to relieve their mind and spirit. These favours are recorded each year in the Knock Shrine Annual.
The very first cure was reported just 10 days after the apparition, when the Gordon family from Claremorris, Co. Mayo took their daughter Delia, who was deaf, to pray at the shrine. When Delia’s mother touched her ears with mortar from the gable wall, she was instantly cured.
From then, more and more pilgrims began to report cures and Knock parish priest, Archdeacon Bartholomew Cavanagh, started to keep a written record. By October 1880 he had collected over 600 testimonies of people who had been cured from blindness, deafness, ulcers, fractures, malignant tumours and lameness.
Many of the cures were attributed to touching the stone of the gable of the church where the apparition occurred and this led to people removing fragments of the stone. Today pilgrims can still touch a panel of the original stone from the ‘Apparition Gable’.
Recent cure
The most recent claim of a cure at Knock relates to the story of a 1989 visit to the shrine by Athlone-based woman Marion Carroll.
Suffering from multiple sclerosis, Marion undertook a pilgrimage to Knock on September 3 of that year, believing that she was in the late stages of her illness, having been diagnosed in 1978. Unable to undertake the pilgrimage alone, Marion was transported by an Order of Malta ambulance to Knock and was carried into the basilica on a stretcher.
In a later interview, Marion recalled events that day: “I was in terrible pain, I received Holy Communion but I was too weak to pray. I looked at the statue of Our Lady of Knock and I felt she would understand. I said to her: ‘You are a mother too. You know how I feel.’
“It was then that I got this beautiful feeling – like a whispering breeze and I felt that if I opened the stretcher I would be able to walk. I didn’t say anything in case I looked stupid. When I got back to St John’s, the rest home for the sick at Knock, I asked for the stretcher to be opened and I was able to stand up and I even drank a cup of tea unaided. There was no stiffness and no pain, it was like experiencing every bit of happiness you have ever dreamed of.”
Having examined the case via their own medical bureau of experts, authorities at Knock referred Marion’s experience to the Vatican for further examination.
The case is still under examination, but if approved by Rome, Marion Carroll’s cure could yet be the first official miracle associated with Knock.
Letters from people who received a cure in Knock now form part of an archival collection in Knock Museum.
Archive
They were found in the archive of the Sisters of St Joseph of Peace in Washington, DC and were returned to Knock Shrine in 1998. Margaret Anna Cusack, the ‘Nun of Kenmare’, set up this small religious community in Knock in the early 1880s, which later blossomed into an international community.
The archive is the largest collection of original material relating to Knock for the years immediately after the Apparition 1879-1882. It comprises part of the original Diary of Cures penned by Archdeacon Cavanagh, some of the original witness testimonies and over 130 original letters of cures.
The entire collection is accessible to the public in Knock Museum.
