Our Lady of Pontmain

War between France and Prussia began in July 1870, and France lost battle after battle. By January 1871 Paris was under siege and German armies held much of the country. They were moving west towards Laval, the chief town of the Mayenne.

Pontmain was then a hamlet of about 400 or 500 people, near the border of Brittany. Since 23 September 1870, 38 of its young men had been away at war and nobody had any news of them. A typhoid epidemic was beginning again. The shrine's account of that day tells of heavy snow and bitter cold, and of an earth tremor about half past twelve that frightened everyone.

The people had a remarkable priest. Abbé Michel Guérin had come on 24 November 1836, and had asked his bishop to give him this poor place. He found a leaking chapel with worm-eaten benches, and he rebuilt it with his people. He set up a school with two sisters and brought a small statue of Our Lady into every home. Each family said the Rosary daily. From 8 December 1854 he lit four candles on Our Lady's altar at every service. In 1860 the vault of the church was painted blue with gold stars. All this matters, because what the children saw looked very like it.

About half past five, after dark, Eugène and Joseph Barbedette were helping their father in the barn, pounding gorse for the mare. An old neighbour, Jeannette Détais, came with news from soldiers fleeing the defeated Army of the Loire. Eugène took the chance to go to the door and look at the weather.

In the sky above the house opposite he saw a "Beautiful Lady", her arms held out as if to welcome him, smiling. Her robe was blue, sown with gold stars. On her head was a black veil and a gold crown with a red line round the middle. Her shoes were blue with gold buckles. She stood in a triangle of three large stars. Eugène smiled back. The shrine says that this smile was the only conversation: in all that evening the Lady did not say one word.

Joseph came and saw her too. The grown-ups saw only the three stars. Their mother, Victoire, even went back for her glasses and saw nothing more. She fetched Sister Vitaline from the school, who also saw only the stars. The sister went back and returned with another sister, Marie-Edouard, and three small boarders. The two youngest, Françoise Richer and Jeanne-Marie Lebossé, cried out at once: "Oh! The beautiful Lady! How beautiful she is!" They described her just as the boys had.

Sister Marie-Edouard went to fetch the priest. People came running, and Sister Vitaline began to pray with them.

When Abbé Guérin arrived, the children, who had been kept apart so they could not compare notes, called out that something new was happening. A large blue oval had formed around the Lady. Inside it were four unlit candles, and a small red cross had appeared on her robe over her heart.

Then the crowd began to chat and argue, and the Lady grew sad. "Let us pray," said the priest. Sister Marie-Edouard began the Rosary and the Lady smiled again. With each Hail Mary she slowly grew. The oval grew with her, and the stars multiplied on her dress until, as the children said, they swarmed like an anthill.

At the Magnificat a wide white banner unrolled between the oval and the roof below. Gold capital letters began to appear, one at a time, and the children spelled them out. M, A, I, S: "But". The word stood alone for a time. Then a carter, Joseph Babin, came up from Ernée and shouted: "You may well pray, the Prussians are at Laval!" At that moment the word "PRIEZ", "pray", appeared.

Letter by letter, through the litanies, the first line was finished and closed with a large full stop: "MAIS PRIEZ MES ENFANTS DIEU VOUS EXAUCERA EN PEU DE TEMPS." During the Inviolata a new line began, "MON", and then "FILS". "My Son!" Until then people had only thought it might be her. Now there was a cry of joy: "It is she!" During the Salve Regina the line ended: "MON FILS SE LAISSE TOUCHER", underlined with a thick line of gold.

The priest called for the people's hymn to Mary, "Mother of Hope", the same one they had sung the Sunday before with tight throats. The Lady raised her hands to her shoulders and moved her fingers in time with the singing, and the children laughed for joy. Then a roll passed across and wiped the banner away.

The next hymn was "My sweet Jesus", with its refrain Parce Domine. The children, happy till then, suddenly grew sad, because the Lady had. She did not weep, but her lips trembled. "Never has such sadness been seen on a human face," they said. A bright red cross appeared in front of her, with Jesus on it in a darker red, and above it on a white bar the words "JESUS CHRIST". She took it in both hands and held it out to the children. A small star lit the four candles. The crowd prayed in silence, and many wept.

At the Ave Maris Stella the red crucifix vanished and she returned to her first posture, with a graver smile. A small white cross appeared on each shoulder. It was half past eight.

Abbé Guérin led the night prayers, with people kneeling in the snow or in the barn. During the examination of conscience the children saw a white veil rising from her feet. It slowly covered her, paused at the crown, and then everything was gone. "Can you still see?" asked the priest. "No, Father, it is all over." It was nearly nine. People went home in peace.

The Prussians did not enter Laval that evening, and they withdrew the next day. Accounts of Pontmain report that a General Schmidt said on the morning of the 18th that they could go no further. An armistice followed within days. The shrine gives 25 January, and the general armistice was signed at Versailles on 28 January 1871. All 38 young men of Pontmain came home safe.

Many believers at once saw this as Our Lady's protection. Others point to the state of the war, with France's defeat and the end of fighting so near. The bishop's judgment concerned the apparition, not military history. It is enough to say that the people prayed in fear, and went home in hope.

The day after the apparition the priest questioned the children and sent a report to Bishop Wicart. The bishop ordered a detailed inquiry and went in person to question the witnesses. The children were closely examined. After the canonical process he published his pastoral letter on 2 February 1872, the feast of the Purification, a little over a year after the event, and authorised devotion to Our Lady of Pontmain.

Abbé Guérin organised the first welcome for pilgrims with the sisters from the school. He died on 29 May 1872. On the same day the bishop entrusted the pilgrims and the building of a sanctuary to the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Eugène Barbedette (born 4 November 1858) became a priest of the diocese of Laval, ordained in 1883. He was remembered as a priest "upright, zealous, fervent and uncompromising". He died on 2 May 1927 and is buried at Châtillon-sur-Colmont.

Joseph Barbedette (born 20 November 1860) joined the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and was ordained in 1884. His superiors asked him to write a full account of the apparition. He died on 3 November 1930 and is buried at Pontmain.

Françoise Richer worked as a servant and then as a teacher in small country schools. About 1900 she became housekeeper to Abbé Eugène Barbedette. She died on 28 March 1915 and is buried at Châtillon-sur-Colmont.

Jeanne-Marie Lebossé (born 12 September 1861) was an orphan on her father's side, taken in by her aunt, Sister Timothée, head of the Pontmain school. In 1881 she joined the Sisters of the Holy Family of Bordeaux. She suffered long paralysis and died on 12 December 1933.

None of the four has been beatified. A cause for Abbé Michel Guérin was begun with the permission of the Bishop of Laval in 2013, and he is called Servant of God.

This is little known and should be told plainly.

Around 1919 to 1920 a second canonical process took place. According to the historian Christophe Tropeau, who studied the case in the journal Chrétiens et Sociétés, Sister Jeanne-Marie, then a religious at Bordeaux, first withdrew her testimony, speaking of a secret of confession. The bishop confirmed the apparition behind closed doors in April 1920. Then, in December 1920, before Bishop Grellier of Laval and a commission of theologians, she declared that she had not seen the Virgin.

The record was sealed. Diocesan authorities feared the harm to the faithful and the shrine. The fact became public only in 1971, when René Laurentin and Albert Durand published their history of Pontmain. They left open whether she saw nothing or whether, after fifty years, her memory had failed. Tropeau argues that Church authorities have dealt with the matter unevenly, moving between silence and explanation, and pilgrim materials since then have tended to focus on the two brothers and on Abbé Guérin. The shrine's present biography of her does not mention the retraction.

What does it mean? She was nine at the time, and the words were spoken half a century later. Her statement concerns her own witness. It does not touch the testimony of the two brothers, who became priests, or of Françoise Richer. The bishop's judgment of 1872 stands. Still, a Catholic is not bound to believe in Pontmain, and honest readers may weigh this fact for themselves.

Some accounts also mention other small children present who are said to have seen something. The bishop's judgment names only the four.