By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Part 1
This is first of two articles about the Marian apparitions at L’Ile Bouchard, in northwestern France, near Tours, which took place from December 8-14, 1947. The situation in postwar France was very serious, and there was a real threat from Communism, and even of civil war, but, unknown to nearly all, the remedy was at hand.
L’Ile Bouchard is important because it is a sort of compendium of previous apparitions with aspects of some of these being recapitulated, particularly those which took place in France, although Guadalupe and Fatima also seem to be prominent too, as will become apparent. And it is also important because it emphasizes the great power of the prayer of children.
The first apparition in the church at L’Ile Bouchard took place on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8. Given the tense political situation in France, the sisters who ran the local school had, that morning, asked the children to pray for the good of the country. At about one o’clock in the afternoon, Jacqueline Aubry, aged 12, her sister Jeanette, aged 7, and their cousin, Nicole Robin, aged 10, stopped at the church of St. Gilles to pray.
They went to the altar of the Virgin and began to say a decade of the rosary; but they were not quite halfway through when Jacqueline suddenly saw a beautiful Lady before her, all in white, with hands joined in prayer and a rosary over her right arm. To the left was an angel holding a lily, eyes fixed in contemplation of the Lady. Then the other girls looked up and saw the marvelous scene.
As the Lady smiled at them, Jacqueline whispered that they must tell other people what was happening, so they ran out together and saw a school friend, Laura Croizon, aged 8, and her 13-year-old sister, Sergine. Returning to the church, the five girls made their way toward the altar, as Laura cried out that she could see a beautiful lady and an angel. Sergine, though, saw nothing, and the others had to describe the scene for her.
The angel, who later revealed he was the Angel Gabriel, was surrounded by an intense white light, and was kneeling on his right knee in profound contemplation; he wore a rosy-white robe. In his right hand he held out a lily stalk, while his left hand was placed upon his heart. The two figures were in a rocky grotto. The Lady stood on a rectangular stone block, decorated with a garland of five pink roses, while on the rocks just below were the following words in letters of gold, about three inches high:
“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.”
This the invocation made famous at the Rue du Bac apparitions of 1830.
Once the girls had explained all this to Sergine, the Lady disappeared, and they made way their way out of the church. Jacqueline and Jeanette rushed home to tell their mother, but she did not believe them. Once back at school the news spread very quickly, as Jacqueline excitedly recounted to one of the sisters that she had seen a beautiful Lady in the Church — was she the Blessed Virgin?
The parish priest, Fr. Clovis Ségelle, and the head teacher, came into the schoolyard just then, and were not impressed by these reports. Fr. Ségelle said that Jacqueline must have been seeing double through her thick glasses — and indeed, because of her poor vision and chronic conjunctivitis, Jacqueline did have to wear glasses and continually wipe her eyes.
Jacqueline explained that the other girls had also seen the Lady, and so Fr. Ségelle and the head teacher decided to question them separately. Each gave the same account, and as school began again, Jacqueline spoke once more with the head teacher, who dismissed her curtly, saying she should have stayed in the church if the Lady was really so beautiful.
Jacqueline took up this idea, and lost no time in fetching the other girls and leading them back to the altar of the Virgin, where they were delighted to be beckoned by the smiling Lady. As they knelt before her, though, her expression became extremely sad as she slowly uttered her first words: “Tell the little children to pray for France, for her need is great.”
Our Lady asked the girls for their hands to kiss, bending low to reach the hands of Jacqueline and Nicole. But the other two girls were much smaller and could not reach high enough. Jacqueline took them up, one after the other, and lifted them up at arm’s length, as though they were practically weightless. All four testified to the solidity and warmth of Mary’s hand and the touch of her lips. Before disappearing she asked them to return that evening at five o’clock and the next day at one o’clock.
Jacqueline and Nicole spoke of what had happened, and after class they were separated and asked to write out accounts of their experiences, which were matching. Once the girls got home they found their parents not inclined to believe them, and only Jacqueline was able to return to the church, for the rosary and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in honor of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Although devout, thanks to a pious neighbor, Jacqueline was not from a religious household, and had received little religious instruction.
A Grotto
The next day, Tuesday, December 9, at one o’clock, all four girls assembled in the church, and so the general pattern for the week’s events was set. They knelt by the Virgin’s altar and began to pray Hail Marys, when suddenly a shining golden sphere, about three feet across, came out of the wall and unfolded itself as a rectangular curtain of silvery light, on which the rocky grotto stood out in relief. The angel was kneeling on the other side, while the words on the rocks had changed. Now they read: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Again they were being presented with important words from a previous Marian apparition, this time Lourdes. They could also see parts of a word written in letters of gold across Mary’s breast: “Ma . . . cat,” but didn’t understand what they meant; her hands hid the middle part of the letters.
Mary, with a grave expression, showed the girls the golden cross of her rosary, and asked them to kiss it. Jacqueline and Nicole both stood up to do this. The metal was cold to their lips and they were penetrated with a sense of Mary’s grief.
The Virgin then made a beautiful, but extremely slow, Sign of the Cross. It took two minutes to complete, and the girls copied her movements. Once this was over, Mary said with great emphasis: “Pray for France, which in these days is in great danger.”
Then she asked that the priest come at two o’clock, with the children and a crowd, so that they could all pray. She also asked for a grotto, and that her statue and that of the angel should be placed in it, promising to bless them once this was done. With that the apparition disappeared.
The next article will look at the events at L’Ile Bouchard from the third day onward, and at how it subsequently gained Church approval.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related web site at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
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