Knock in shambles after 'apparition'

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“Visionary” Joe Coleman, holding cross, at Knock Shrine

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A blistering attack has been launched by the manager of Knock Shrine against thousands of pilgrims who stampeded and left the place “in a terrible state” on Sunday in the hopes of seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Pat Lavelle, manager of the County Mayo shrine, said, “Our basilica was left in a terrible state afterwards. It was anything but holy or reverent. There was food and drink spilled inside, chairs turned upside-down, the carpets were soiled and even worse than that.”

Eyewitness Michael Commins, a local newspaper reporter, said it was as if panic suddenly gripped pilgrims in two chapels at the back of the huge basilica dedicated to Our Lady.

Commins said, “All the ingredients were present for a human catastrophe. A stampede the likes of which has never been seen in Knock took place within the confines of two of the chapels, and there was genuine fear that serious injuries or worse could be the end result of the unprecedented surge.”

Up to 15,000 people had gathered from all over Ireland for an apparition of Our Lady which had been predicted by Joe Coleman, a self-proclaimed “visionary” from Ballyfermot, Dublin.

Coleman has claimed that the Blessed Virgin has been visiting him for a number of years. Three weeks prior to last Saturday -- on October 11 -- more than 5,000 pilgrims gathered at Knock following an earlier prediction that there would be an apparition. Many then said they believed there was an apparition because they could see the sun shimmering and changing color, as well as dancing in the sky.

Last Saturday, Coleman and another “visionary,” Keith Henderson, knelt in the front row of a packed basilica. They claimed Our Lady appeared to them at 3 p.m., although there was a sense of anti-climax among the rest of crowd, most of whom looked constantly upwards with their cameras and mobile camera phones at the ready.

Hundreds left disappointed. One man, a native of Knock, scoffed at what he said resembled the “pagan art of sun worship.”

Then suddenly, at 3:20 p.m., the precise time that the Blessed Virgin had supposedly appeared three weeks earlier, there was a blitz of mobile phone messages from those outside and shouts that the sun had been seen dancing close to the basilica. Men, women and children rushed to get a glimpse.

Commins wrote in the Mayo News, “Never have I witnessed a more dangerous situation at any crowd gathering in my life. There was pandemonium for close on three minutes as people literally jumped across seats in a mad rush to the back of two of the chapels. A sense of terror gripped many as the stampede continued and it was a miracle in itself that no one was seriously hurt.

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