Our Lady of Banneux

Between January 15 and March 2, 1933, Mariette Beco, an eleven-year-old girl in the rural Belgian village of Banneux, reported eight brief apparitions of a woman she called the Beautiful Lady near a spring in her family's garden. The woman identified herself as the Virgin of the Poor and asked Mariette to dip her hands in the spring, which she said was "reserved for all nations — to relieve the sick." The apparitions were brief and Mariette's subsequent life was unremarkable. Bishop Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs of Liège conducted a careful twelve-year investigation before approving the apparitions in 1949 — the same year as the formal approval of Beauraing. The spring at Banneux has since become a major international pilgrimage destination, and the Virgin of the Poor is invoked particularly for the sick and displaced.