Our Lady of Banneux, the Virgin of the Poor

The place and the family

Banneux was a poor hamlet in the hills south of Liège. The Beco family lived in a small working man's house, set back from the road and away from the village, in front of a large fir wood. Mariette was the eldest of seven children. Life was hard. The financial crisis that began in 1929 had fallen most heavily on modest families and workers. The first appearance came two weeks before Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany, on 30 January 1933, just across the nearby border. The shrine itself recalls this background: hope given to poor people as Europe slid into darkness.

The chaplain of Banneux was Father Louis Jamin (1898 to 1961), a young priest of the diocese. The shrine says he had been sent there to recover his health, while struggling with depression and with doubts about his faith and his vocation. He would become the chief witness of what followed.

Only weeks earlier, in another part of Belgium, children at Beauraing had also reported seeing Our Lady. At first Father Jamin thought Mariette had been influenced by those reports.

Sunday 15 January 1933: the Lady in the garden

In the evening Mariette looked out of the window into the garden and saw a lady full of light. She later described a woman in a long white gown with a blue sash, her right foot visible and crowned with a golden rose, standing in a great oval of light, with a rosary. The Lady beckoned with her hand. Mariette's mother glimpsed something too, was frightened, and locked the door. She forbade her daughter to go out. No words were spoken.

Wednesday 18 January: the spring

At seven in the evening Mariette was kneeling in the garden, praying. Her father and two neighbours watched. Suddenly she left the garden and went out onto the road, as though called. She knelt twice on the way, and a third time at the ditch, beside a puddle fed by a spring. The Lady walked ahead, moving backwards and facing her. It was bitterly cold, and the shrine says it was minus twelve degrees, so the water had to be broken through the ice. “Push your hands in the water,” the Lady said. Mariette obeyed, and repeated the Lady's words: “This spring is reserved for me. Good evening. Goodbye.”

This spring was nothing special. It lay about 100 metres from the house, and a farmer had dug it out a little so that his few cows could drink.

Thursday 19 January: her name

The weather was very bad. Mariette knelt on the path, with a small group saying the Rosary, and asked, “Who are you, beautiful lady?” The answer was, “I am the Virgin of the Poor.” The Lady led her again to the spring. Mariette, a child, thought the spring had been reserved for her, and asked why. The Lady smiled: “This spring is reserved for all nations, to relieve the sick.” “Thank you, thank you,” said Mariette. The Lady answered, “I will pray for you. Goodbye.”

Friday 20 January: a little chapel

Mariette had slept badly and stayed in bed all day. At 6.45 in the evening she got up, dressed and went out. “Oh, here she is,” she said. “What do you desire, my beautiful Lady?” Smiling, the Lady answered, “I would like a little chapel.” She blessed the child with her right hand. Mariette fainted. About thirteen people were present, among them Father Jamin and the first two journalists.

Three weeks of silence

After this, nothing happened for three weeks. Some people mocked her. Local boys called her “Bernadette” and knelt in front of her for a blessing, and she was laughed at within her own family. Mariette went on praying in the garden each evening at seven, and she received her First Communion on 12 February, according to one chronology.

Saturday 11 February: “I come to relieve suffering”

On the anniversary of the first appearance at Lourdes she was drawn once more to the road and the spring, where she dipped her hands in the water and made the sign of the cross. She got up and ran home crying. The Lady had said, “I come to relieve suffering.” Mariette did not know the word “relieve”, but she knew it was something good, because the Lady smiled.

Wednesday 15 February: a sign?

Father Jamin told her to ask for a sign. “Holy Virgin, Mr Chaplain told me to ask you for a sign.” The answer was, “Believe in me, I will believe in you.” And for Mariette herself: “Pray a lot. Goodbye.” The Lady also entrusted a secret to the child. Mariette kept it. No such secret has ever been published, and nothing in the Church's judgment depends on it.

The shrine records that this was a turning point for Father Jamin. The priest who had asked for proof became the strongest supporter of the message.

Monday 20 February

Mariette knelt in the snow, then on the road, then at the spring, praying and crying because the Lady was leaving too soon. Smiling, the Lady said, “My dear child, pray very much.” Then, more gravely, “Goodbye.”

Thursday 2 March: the last appearance

It had rained heavily since mid-afternoon. Mariette went out at seven, and was on her third rosary when the rain suddenly stopped. She fell silent, stretched out her arms, got up, took a step and knelt again. Afterwards, crying at home, she gave the message: “I am the Mother of the Saviour, Mother of God. Pray a lot.” Before leaving, the Lady laid her hands on the child and said, “Goodbye.”

The shrine counts fewer than eighty words in all eight meetings. The rest was gesture: a beckoning hand, a smile, silent prayer, a walk to the water, and a blessing.

The inquiries

The story of the inquiry is not a simple one, and it is told honestly below under “How the Church sees it”. It took sixteen years.

What became of Mariette

Mariette did not become a nun and did not become a public figure. Her life was hard, and the shrine's own biography of her tells it plainly.

Crowds came to the house every day. Some people showered her with jewels and fine clothes, and others jeered. On 8 March 1933 she was placed in a sisters' school at Aywaille to get away from visitors, but they followed her there, and she stopped going after the summer. She later studied with the Ursulines at Tildonk and at Verviers. From 1935 she worked as a nurse's assistant in clinics in Liège and Verviers, and grew close to a religious sister, Mother Lutgarde.

In December 1939 the family fled to Tulle in France, and returned in 1940. The shrine says that during the occupation Mariette risked her life in the resistance, in the “Constance” network, hiding escaped men in an attic at her parents' house behind a wardrobe. She later received a diploma of honour but refused the award offered with it.

On 26 December 1942, aged 21, she married Mathieu Hoeberigs, against her parents' wishes. They opened a restaurant in Banneux and had two children, Jean-Marie and Myriam. A third child, Lutgarde, lived only a few hours, and Mariette nearly died at the birth. The marriage ended in separation. She then ran a chip shop in Pepinster and in 1972 moved to a hamlet in Theux with a companion, Raymond, who died in 1989. Her last years brought failing sight and hearing, and the loss of her brother, her daughter and her sister.

Through it all she refused attention. “I was only a messenger,” she explained. “I had to deliver my message and then it was over.” And again, “I've said what I had to say. I haven't had a word to add, nor subtract.” When St John Paul II came in 1985 she agreed to meet him in a sacristy, away from the crowds, and then went to sit among the blind. Those who knew her said she prayed late into the night, and slept only two or three hours. She held to one line of the message: “I will pray for you.” She died on 2 December 2011, aged 90, and her funeral was held in the church of the Virgin of the Poor.

Nobody needs to make Mariette a saint in order to receive the message, and she never claimed to be one. The Church's judgment rests on the events and their fruits, not on a perfect life. A poor girl with a difficult life may be a fitting messenger for the Virgin of the Poor.

The words are given as the shrine of Banneux prints them in English; translations vary slightly.

What “Believe in me, I will believe in you” means

These words have struck many readers as bold. Our faith is in God alone, and Mary is not its object in the way God is. Read with the rest of the message, the sentence is a mother's word to a mocked child and a doubting priest: trust me, for I trust you. The next words are “Pray a lot”. Bishop Jousten put it this way in 2008: the Mother of Jesus always refers to her Son.

• The little chapel. The Chapel of the Apparitions was built and inaugurated in the summer of 1933, the same year as the request.
• The father's conversion. Mariette's father, Julien, is reported to have returned to the faith because of what he saw.
• The chaplain. Father Jamin, who had arrived ill and doubting, gave the rest of his life to Banneux.
• The International Union of Prayer. Father Jamin founded it in 1934, because Mariette was told three times to “pray a lot”. It still exists. Its members pray each day for the Church, their diocese, vocations and the holiness of priests.
• Care of the sick. A hospital for pilgrims was built in 1938. Today's Hospitality Notre-Dame is reported to have 360 beds for sick pilgrims and their companions. The “Triduums of the sick” run through the season, with the Blessing of the Sick.
• Pilgrims of all nations. The shrine says “hundreds of thousands” come every year, without an exact figure. A Catholic News Agency report in 2008 gave 500,000 a year. A higher figure of 700,000 appears in travel writing and could not be confirmed. About 25,000 people came for the Assumption on 15 August 2025, by the organisers' estimate, among them about 4,000 Chaldean Christians whose community fled Iraq.
• A wider family. Banneux takes part in the European Marian Network, formed in 2003, which links 21 shrines. Many churches and chapels around the world bear the title of Our Lady of Banneux or Our Lady of the Poor.

Banneux lies in the Belgian Ardennes, about 25 kilometres south of Liège according to the shrine. The nearest large station is Liège. The regional bus company TEC serves the shrine, and the shrine's website lists the buses. It is open all year, and the main season runs from May to October.

The chief places are the Chapel of the Apparitions, the Beco house opposite, the Spring and the short road Mariette walked, the Church of the Virgin of the Poor, the Chapel of the Message, the Way of the Cross and the Hospitality. Each evening of the season the Rosary is prayed, and there is Eucharistic adoration, confession and the Blessing of the Sick.

Do what Mariette did. Walk the few steps from the road to the water. Put your hands in. Pray for someone who suffers.