Our Lady of Akita

Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, born May 28, 1931, entered the Institute of the Handmaids of the Eucharist in the Yuzawadai district of Akita, Japan in 1973, already suffering from near-total deafness. On June 28, 1973, a cross-shaped wound appeared on the inside of her left palm — a stigma she had not sought. A corresponding wound materialized on the right hand of the convent's small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary on July 6, 1973, the same day Agnes heard the statue speak and received the first of three messages.

The second message followed on August 3, 1973, and the third on October 13, 1973 — the anniversary of the Fatima miracle of the sun. The first message called for prayer and reparation. The second warned that humanity, having fallen into sin, faced a chastisement greater than the Flood. The third and most grave spoke of division and loss of faith spreading within the Church itself, of cardinals opposing cardinals and bishops opposing bishops, and of fire descending from heaven if the faithful did not convert and do penance.

The wooden statue — carved from a single block of Japanese katsura wood and standing about three feet tall — exhibited three distinct physical phenomena. The wound on the statue's hand bled on Fridays from July through September 29, 1973, the day it closed and the statue's body was found covered in a sweat-like moisture. Beginning January 4, 1975, the statue wept. The weeping continued at irregular intervals for nearly seven years, ending September 15, 1981, on the 101st occasion. Professor Sagisaka Takashi of the Akita University Faculty of Legal Medicine confirmed the fluids were of genuine human origin. Three distinct blood types were identified across the samples — B, AB, and O — a medically anomalous result, since an individual's blood, tears, and sweat all share one type. Agnes herself is blood type B.

Agnes's deafness was healed twice. On October 13, 1974, she temporarily regained her hearing during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; her condition was documented as incurable by doctors before and after. On May 30, 1982, again instantaneously during Benediction, her hearing was permanently restored and confirmed by Akita Municipal Hospital the following month.

On April 22, 1984, Bishop John Shojiro Ito of Niigata, concluding eight years of investigation, issued a pastoral declaration recognizing the supernatural character of the events and authorizing veneration of Our Lady of Akita throughout the diocese. In June 1988, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reviewed Ito's pastoral letter and offered no objection to its dissemination among the faithful — a statement Bishop Ito himself later clarified was not a formal judgment on the credibility of the apparitions.