Our Lady of Beauraing

The place. Beauraing lies in the French-speaking south of Belgium, near the French border. Its people had a saying in Walloon, which the shrine still likes to quote: Beauraing is beautiful, but it is nothing. It had about 1,500 to 2,000 people. The year 1932 fell between two wars, in the hard times after the crash of 1929, when Hitler's party was rising in nearby Germany.

The place of the appearances is a very plain one. It is the small winter garden of a school run by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine of Nancy, squeezed between the road and the railway, with a few trees, a thin holly and a wild hawthorn.

The children. They came from two ordinary families. Hector Voisin was a railway clerk, and he and his wife Marie-Louise had Fernande, Gilberte and Albert. The Degeimbre girls, Andrée and Gilberte, lived with their widowed mother and an older sister, and kept cattle. One reference work describes the two homes as not much given to church practice. The five were friends, and they got into mischief like other children, for example ringing doorbells and running away. Every evening they went to fetch Gilberte Voisin from her study hour at the convent school.

29 November 1932. At about six in the evening Albert rang the school bell, turned and cried out that the Virgin was walking above the bridge. The railway bridge was about 50 metres away. The others looked and saw a shining lady in white, walking in the air a little above it. Sister Valéria came to the door and thought it nonsense. She went to fetch Gilberte Voisin, and at the doorway Gilberte saw her too. The children ran home in fright, and agreed to come back the next evening.

30 November and 1 December. She appeared again above the bridge. On 1 December she came first over the bridge, then near the holly in the garden, and then under a branch of the hawthorn by the garden gate. There she would appear for all the rest, about 30 more times. That evening the parents came along too. Madame Degeimbre, who called it all nonsense, brought friends and a stout stick, to find the joker who was frightening her girls. She beat about the bushes. "Careful, Mama, you are right on it!" little Gilberte called out. Only the five saw anything. The adults saw just the children dropping to their knees with a sound of knees hitting the ground, all five looking toward the same spot.

2 December. The superior, Mother Théophile, wanted this "comedy" to stop. She locked the gates and let the two guard dogs loose in the garden. The children stayed on the pavement outside. She appeared, turned toward them through the gate, and the shrine's account says that the barking dogs at once went quiet and lay down. Gilberte Degeimbre used to say that the dogs were the first to believe them.

That evening Albert asked whether she was the Immaculate Conception, and she nodded. He asked, for them all, what she wanted. She spoke for the first time: that they should be very good.

How she looked. The children described a long white robe with a light blue sheen, and a long white veil falling on her shoulders. Thin rays of light rose from her head like a crown. She usually held her hands joined, and she smiled. They said she looked about 18 to 20, with deep blue eyes. Asked once whether the Virgin had an accent, little Gilberte replied that she supposed it was the Beauraing accent, since she had noticed none.

8 December: the tests. The crowds had been growing, and on the feast of the Immaculate Conception some 10,000 to 15,000 people came. The bishop of Namur urged prudence and forbade his clergy to attend. A notary questioned the children, then doctors and journalists came. During the ecstasy of that evening, which lasted a little over a quarter of an hour, doctors pinched them hard, pricked them, shone light in their eyes, and held a lighted match under the hand of Gilberte Voisin, and a knife point against Andrée's skin. The children did not react, and afterwards they had no marks and knew nothing of it. The children said only that she had been more beautiful than ever. Their homes were not easy either: Madame Degeimbre refused her youngest her St Nicholas treat that year.

17 to 23 December. On the 17th she asked for a chapel. On the 21st, when they asked her to say who she was, she answered that she was the Immaculate Virgin. On the 23rd they asked why she came, and she answered that people might come here on pilgrimage.

29 December to 2 January. On the 29th the children first saw a rosary on her right arm. As she opened her arms in farewell, Fernande saw her heart shining like gold, and the others saw it in the following days. They said it was about the size of an orange, all radiant with light. From this comes her title, Our Lady of the Golden Heart. She told them she would soon stop appearing. On the 30th she asked them to pray very much. On 1 January she asked them to pray always. On 2 January, with over 12,000 people there, she said that she would speak to each of them the next day.

3 January 1933. About 30,000 people gathered (some sources say 20,000). She gave a personal message to each of the three youngest, which they never revealed. She said she was the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, and told them to pray always. She promised that she would convert sinners. Last of all she asked Fernande whether she loved her Son and loved her, and at the answer yes she said: then sacrifice yourself for me. Fernande recalled a small pause before the last words. Then she said farewell.

The children afterwards. None of the five entered religious life. All married, and they lived quiet family lives, faithful to what they had said.

• Andrée Degeimbre (born 1918) married Georges van den Steen in 1941, and had three children. She died on 11 June 1978, the first of the five to die. According to one account she came daily to the hawthorn for over 44 years.
• Fernande Voisin (born 1917) married Albert Despas in 1941 and worked as a visiting nurse. She had five children and died on 9 May 1979.
• Gilberte Voisin (born 1919) married a police officer, Amédée Pierret, in 1945. He was killed on duty in 1953, leaving her with two children. She went back to Beauraing and died in an accident on 3 January 2003, the seventieth anniversary of the last appearance.
• Albert Voisin (born 1921) married Yvonne Embrechts in 1948. They went to the Belgian Congo, where their three children were born. They returned in 1961 and he taught at the Institut Notre-Dame at Beauraing. He died on 23 December 2003.
• Gilberte Degeimbre (born 1923) married André Philippe in 1947. They lived for many years in Italy before returning to Beauraing. She died on 10 February 2015, at 91, the last of the five.

The words below follow the French in the shrine's own account, given here in English. She said very little.

The secrets. The three personal messages remained secret, and the children never told them. They were given to the children themselves, and nothing in the Church's judgment depends on them. There is no reason to look for hidden warnings here.

The golden heart. The shrine's canon Joël Rochette reads it this way: to say someone has a heart of gold is to say that person overflows with love, and Mary's heart is united with the heart of Jesus. That is a devout reflection and not a formal teaching.

Prudent limits. The Church's judgment covers the five children and those weeks only. Others in the same years claimed to see the Virgin at Beauraing. One of them, a 58-year-old man named Tilman Côme, said that he had visions and had been cured, and a medical and psychological examination in June 1934 went against him. Such claims form no part of the bishop's judgment. The care of the bishops of Namur over 17 years is itself part of the story.

• Pilgrims. It is reported as among the most visited Marian shrines in Belgium. One account gives about 200,000 visitors for 2022, the ninetieth anniversary year. There is no other counted figure.
• Prayer. The shrine has daily Mass, the Rosary each evening at 6:30, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, a holy hour on Thursdays followed by a night of adoration, and prayer for vocations on the twenty-fifth of the month.
• Confession. The penitentiary, called the corridor of mercy, recalls her words about sinners. Confessions are heard daily.
• Spread abroad. Bishop Charue's letter speaks of a lasting wave of Marian fervour. The Pro Maria Committee was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1949 by Fr Joseph Debergh, OMI, and statues of Our Lady of Beauraing now stand in several countries.
• Walking pilgrimages. Each month, people walk from Houyet to the shrine, keeping alive her request that people should come on pilgrimage.

Beauraing is about 115 km south of Brussels, near the French border, and has a railway station. The address is Rue de l'Aubépine 12. See the hawthorn enclosure with the Carrara marble statue by Aurélien Pierroux, made with the children's guidance and placed on the exact spot at the height of the appearances; the hawthorn itself lives on, despite a fire in 1940 and a tornado in 2021. See the votive chapel in local blue stone (1947 to 1954), the Basilica by Roger Bastin, with the Rosary church below it, the former school, the Way of the Cross in the church of the Rosary by Max Van der Linden, and the Marian museum. A short film on the story runs daily in French, Dutch, English and German. For times, see the shrine's website.