5,000 Gather to Share Faith in Virgin Mary

Wayne Wassell parked his wheelchair in front of a 6-foot statue of the Virgin Mary, hoping for a miracle. A lapsed churchgoer, Wassell was paralyzed three months ago when a blood clot lodged in his spine.

On Saturday, he was on the UC Irvine campus, among a gathering of more than 5,000 Marianists, people with a fervent devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The ninth annual Medjugorje Peace Conference is named for one of the most well-known apparition sites, where six children in 1981 claimed to see and converse with the Virgin Mary in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since that time, an estimated 15 million people have made the pilgrimage up Podbrdo Hill hoping to experience a miracle or renew their sagging faith.

The two-day conference includes a variety of religious services, confession sessions, inspirational speeches, healing services and testimonials from people who said they’ve experienced Mary.

One of the biggest draws was Ivan Dragicevic, one of the children who is said to have seen Mary at Medjugorje. Dragicevic said he continues to converse and pray with Mary daily, and he often travels the world spreading her word of world peace.

“She said, ‘Dear children, peace, peace, peace,’ ” Dragicevic told the crowd through a translator.

Wassell said he’s planning a trip to Medjugorje and is courting Catholicism after years of agnosticism.

“I’m not wholly convinced of this Mary thing, but I’m not critical anymore,” said Wassell, who lives in Rosemead. “It can’t hurt.”

Theologians have noted a resurgence of interest in the Virgin Mary that is manifesting itself in swarms of pilgrimages to apparition sites and a surge in the Marianist movement.

“Mary’s got quite an itinerary these days,” said Father Gregory Coiro of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

In the last 18 years, there have been more than 40 Mary sightings reported in North and South America alone, appearing on everything from shrouds to grottoes to oak leaves.

The sightings have popped up all over the world, even in Orange County. In 1991, several people said they saw the Virgin Mary appear and say the rosary at Our Lady of the Pillar Church in Santa Ana.

The Catholic church has expressed skepticism about the rash of Mary apparitions, although church officials have not dismissed the phenomenon outright. The Vatican has officially recognized 14 Mary sightings in the last 200 years.

A throng of Marianists gathered in early October in Conyers, Georgia, where more than 100,000 people waited for a Georgia housewife to channel the Virgin Mary’s prophecies.

Some theologians are wary of the burgeoning number of folks who claim to be the Virgin Mary’s conduit.

“I think a lot of the Mary devotion ends up in the area of religious hysteria, when people see the face of Mary on flour tortillas and garage doors,” said Father Thomas Rausch, professor and chair of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Westchester.

Other clerics agree but acknowledge that it serves a purpose by leading the spiritually adrift back to the Catholic church.

Irma Andrade, attending the conference for the third time, said she stopped going to church when a sister died from leukemia a few years ago. After a trip to Medjugorje, where she said she saw rosaries turn to gold and the sun spin in circles, Andrade said she’s back in the pews at her church every Sunday.

“Mary is the mother figure who nudges us back to Christ,” she said.

Marcia Vazquez of Oceanside said she’s deepened her faith by praying to the Virgin Mary, who she relates to as a mother.

“She’s so loving and peaceful,” she said. “Mary’s the one I pray to first.”

Wassell, the Rosemead resident, said he thinks that a lot of women look to Mary as a female role model in a tradition cluttered with masculine iconography. As for Wassell, he’s going to look to her for a miracle.

“Miracles I don’t doubt,” he said. “I’m hoping the same thing happens to me.”