At La Salette, Mary wept in front of the shepherds

On Saturday, September 19, 1846, at around 3pm, two young shepherds were grazing their flock above the small village of La Salette-Fallavaux, when a beautiful woman in tears appeared to them. She addressed a long message for the local people, reproaching them for the irreligious behaviors that were becoming widespread. The apparition of the Virgin Mary at La Salette was recognised by the ecclesiastical authorities in 1851, following an innovative and particularly thorough investigation. Today, La Salette is the second largest place of pilgrimage in France, after Lourdes, and one of the largest in Europe.

General view of the sanctuary of Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette / © CC BY-SA 4.0/Daniel Culsan

Reasons to believe:

The account of the apparition was written down the day after it occurred, in the presence of the parish priest of La Salette. The subsequent accounts never departed from the first in a significant way, proving that it wasn't a fabricated story.

In 1846, religious practice in the region was in decline, Sunday rest was poorly respected, Marian worship was ignored, and historical documentation reveals a fairly widespread habit of blasphemy. The words of the Virgin denouncing these behaviours could not have been invented by the children: they did not have the education and perspective to understand the religious landscape of their region at the time. A pseudo-psychological argument about exacerbated religious fervor causing illusions and delusions is completely unfounded.

Although the attitude of the weeping Virgin was already seen in some pious images at the beginning of the 19th century, it was still exceptional before 1846. Above all, the seated position of Mary, her local clothing, and the ornamental and psychological details are unique, never seen in previous religious art or literature before the apparition.

The local clergy and population had zero motive for inventing a fable. Far from arousing unanimous enthusiasm, the words of the apparition denouncing the lack of faith were at first criticized in the following decades among the locals. Speaking about the apparition from the pulpit the day after the event, the parish priest of La Salette attracted animosity, and the visionaries were harassed for many months.

The words of the apparition did not invent anything in terms of piety or liturgy, but pointed back to the Gospel, and invited people to pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary. At times Our Lady of La Salette spoke in the local dialect that the two visionaries mastered better than French. The message, however, was not just for the people of the region, but for the universal Church: "My children, pass it on to all my people!" the apparition said.

Unexplained healings occurred in the first few weeks after the apparition and were also taken into account by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities.

The authenticity of the apparition, definitively confirmed on September 19, 1851, by Bishop Philibert de Bruillard of Grenoble, was confirmed a second time in 1855 by his successor, Bishop Jacques Ginoulhiac. This double recognition is unique in the history of Christianity.

The cultural imprint left by the apparition to this day rules out the idea of a childish fiction or a lie: famous literary Catholic figures such as Veuillot, Bloy, Huysmans, Maritain, Claudel, Péguy, Bernanos and Renan evoked the supernatural experience of La Salette in their respective works.

Summary:

On Saturday September 19, 1846, two young shepherds named Melanie Calvat, 15, and Maximin Giraud, 11, were grazing their flock above the small village of La Salette-Fallavaux (population of 734 at the time), at an elevation of 1769 metres, in southeastern France (Isère department). This is a mountainous region inhabited by silence and solitude.

At around 3pm, the two children saw a bright light appear, in the centre of which was a "beautiful lady" in tears, her head, waist and feet surrounded by roses, and carrying a large crucifix on her chest and a heavy chain on her shoulders. "If my people do not want to submit, I am forced to let go of the arm of my Son. If I do not want my Son to abandon you, I have to pray to him without ceasing. But you do not care about that! No matter how much you pray, no matter how much you do, you will never be able to repay the trouble I have taken for you. I have given you six days to work, I have reserved the seventh for myself and they won't give it to me [...] those who drive the carts can't even swear without putting my Son's name in the middle..." the apparition said to the two shepherds.

Maximin and Melanie had probably witnessed this lack of respect toward God Our Lady was alluding to, including in their own families. But the two children were in no way able to conceptualize these forms of impiety: their life was limited to an area of about thirty square kilometres around La Salette, in no way allowed them to observe and above all analyse those religious failings - such as the decline in the practice of Sunday rest. Their cultural 'biotope' and the little amount of religious instruction they had received prevented them from being able to distort, misrepresent or even exaggerate the dazzling appearance of the "beautiful lady" and the evangelical nature of her words. They met Mary with no preconceptions, as they would someone they knew. Unlike a fictional account, their testimony escapes the distorting work of memory and a narrative reconstruction of the facts.

So far, the apparition had spoken in the local dialect, which the children understand better than French. The rest of the message went on to mention the agricultural realities of the region, which were very difficult at the time: "If the harvest is bad, you are the only ones to blame. I already showed you this last year with the potatoes, but you didn't take any notice. On the contrary: when you found spoiled potatoes, you swore and added the name of my Son in the middle of it [...] this year, for Christmas, there won't be any more." This was an invitation to conversion, prayer, and a return to the teachings of the Church, all notions that the two shepherds did not have the mental tools to formulate.

The rest of the message, delivered in French this time, continues the same idea: "If they convert, stones and rocks will become heaps of grain and potatoes will be sown by the earth." The message is not abstract or disconnected from reality. On the contrary, it reflected the children's daily lives: "In summer, only a few older women go to mass. The others work on Sundays all summer and winter [...]. They only go to mass to make fun of religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shops, like dogs."Finally, Mary described events known only to them, such as the anecdote of the spoiled wheat found "half an hour from Corps", Maximin's village. She evoked the story in great detail, including the words of Maximin's father!

There is another important aspect: although representations of the Virgin weeping existed in France before 1846 (during the Second Bourbon Restoration, 1814-1830, and thanks to advances in the manufacture of images, such as lithography) the children had never seen them, as the production centers of these artistic forms were so far from La Salette (from 1851 to 1869, Paris produced 88% of French production of images of the Virgin weeping). Apart from a highly improbable plot to influence the visionaries beforehand, it is hard to see how they would have been exposed to this type of images of the Virgin before the day of the apparition. Mary's features, the objects she had on, the detailed and not merely symbolic presence of the instruments of the Passion, the unusually large size of her crucifix, and her seated posture while weeping: these are all elements that could not be found before 1846 in European representations and pious images showing the Virgin weeping. How could the children have invented these details?

The day after the apparition (Sunday morning), the children recounted their unusual encounter to the parish priest of La Salette, who took the first handwritten notes of the event, and which he mentioned in his Sunday homily. In the evening, three adults recorded the account of the apparition as told by Melanie alone, as Maximin was back in Corps with his family. This text, known as the "Pra relation" (Baptiste Pra, Melanie's teacher, was present that evening) is the oldest first hand account we have. All subsequent versions are virtually identical, starting with the document drawn up a few weeks later by Fr. Mélin, the parish priest of Corps. The latter noted the absence of any "trickery" or "lie".

On May 22, the Corps Justice of the Peace, in the presence of a clerk, interrogated the two visionaries separately. His report was sent to the Grenoble public prosecutor's office, which decided to abandon its investigation. In October, the new parish priest of La Salette, Father Louis Perrin, interviewed the children in turn and testified to the unchanging nature of their accounts from the day of the apparition.

In February 1847, Father François Lagier, the parish priest of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes and a specialist in regional dialects, interviewed Melanie and Maximin for hours on end. From these interviews, he emerged completely convinced of the authenticity of the stories: the vocabulary, syntax and grammar of the dialect used by the apparition exceeded the natural abilities of the little shepherds.

The visionaries soon revealed that the Virgin had entrusted each one of them with a different "secret": Melanie's secret was unknown to Maximin, and vice versa. On October 12, 1846, unaware of it until that date, the two children revealed the existence of this secret to each other. The text of these secrets, written in the diocese of Grenoble, was sent to Pope Pius IX, who read it on July 18, 1851. The successive versions of these secrets (three in Maximin's possession and five in Melanie's) have been cross-checked and examined.

On November 14, 1846, Bishop Philibert de Bruillard of Grenoble submitted the documents in his possession to his priests. On July 19, 1847, the regional and then national response to the first miraculous healings led the prelate to open a canonical investigation. On the following December 13, the members of the commission declared themselves in favor of an official approval of the apparition. It was not until September 19, 1851, that an episcopal letter proclaimed the authenticity of the apparition to Melanie and Maximin, which, according to this text, presented "all the characteristics of truth". In 1855, Bishop Jacques Ginoulhiac set up a new commission of investigation, following which he confirmed this recognition.

As early as 1848, three years before the public proclamation mentioned above, the Bishop of Grenoble authorised the creation of a Fraternity of "Our Lady Reconciler of La Salette", which has been attached to the shrine ever since. The first stone of the shrine was laid on May 25, 1852. The "Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette", a congregation of pontifical right, had their constitution definitively approved in 1909 by Pope Saint Pius X. The current shrine was built between 1852 and 1879. On August 20, 1879, the shrine's church, soon to be elevated to the rank of minor basilica, was consecrated in the presence of dozens of bishops and priests and thousands of faithful.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

The natural beauty of the apparition site, the simplicity of the two children, the clarity of the message received from the mouth of the apparition and the enduring nature of the pilgrimage make La Salette a unique place.