Our Lady of Siluva

Siluva was originally a deeply Catholic village in Lithuania, but the Catholic Faith was ruthlessly crushed out by the fury of persecution at the time of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic priest heard at that time of the plans to raze the church, and buried its treasures beside a nearby rock where Our Lady of Siluva would appear some eighty years later. Among these treasures was the miraculous picture of Our Lady of Siluva. This apparition was officially authenticated by Pope Pius VI. The Immaculate Conception Church was built around the rock Our Lady of Siluva stood on in 1608.

One summer day, in the year 1608, while a group of boys and girls played near the rock, they were startled when they heard weeping. When they turned around to see who was crying, they saw a beautiful woman holding a baby. She cried bitterly, but said nothing, and after a few moments suddenly disappeared. The children's report brought the whole village to the scene. The ruling Calvinist pastor was among the 100,000 villagers who flocked to the site to see if the children were telling the truth. He rebuked the children for their superstitions, but as he was speaking, the weeping woman suddenly appeared again as everyone stood transfixed by the sight. The pastor demanded to know who she was and why she wept. She replied, "I am the Immaculate Conception, and I am weeping because my beloved Son is no longer worshipped as He has once been." The people, moved by her words, returned to the Catholic Faith in a mass conversion, and Siluva became once more fervently Catholic.

The 1608 apparition of Our Lady of Siluva was approved by the Catholic Church and is the first Eastern European apparition of Our Blessed Mother who came in an effort to bring her children back to the True Faith.