Church Confirms Virgin Mary Apparitions

Visitors attend a mass Sunday in the French Alps where the Catholic Church officially recognized that a shepherd girl saw daily apparitions of the Virgin Mary here beginning in the 1664. She said the apparitions asked her to build a church and a house for priests, which she did.

Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri said he recognized the "supernatural origin" of the apparitions and that pilgrims could "come here in total confidence."


The announcement makes the Notre-Dame-du-Laus church an official pilgrimage site, putting in on par with the "miracle shrine" in Lourdes, France, above, where the Virgin Mary appeared before a 14-year-old girl in 1858.