Marian anecdotes of ordinary people in the 20th century

Verified testimonials · 20th century

The Virgin Mary is not only present in the great battles or in the famous shrines. Throughout the 20th century, anonymous and simple people - a girl from Rwanda, an Austrian peasant, Italian children - witnessed a presence that transformed their lives forever.

1. Immaculée Ilibagiza: the rosary in the hell of Rwanda (1994)

In April 1994, the Rwandan genocide unleashed in just a hundred days a massacre that cost more than 800,000 people, most of them Tutsi. Immaculée Ilibagiza was a 22-year-old Tutsi university student when the massacre began.

His father, a deeply devoted man, sent her to the house of the local Lutheran pastor, a Hutu man named Murinzi. He hid it, along with seven other women, in a bathroom of just three square meters, hidden behind a closet. Ninety-one days remained there.

From the bathroom, Immaculée listened to the interahamwe songs looking for Tutsis to kill them. I was listening to how they asked for her by name. Several times the militia entered the house and searched the adjacent rooms. They never found the hidden door.

During those 91 days, Immaculée prayed the Rosary without ceasing. He says that the rosary allowed him not only to survive physically but also not to succumb to hatred. When she was released, she had lost almost all her family - her mother and two brothers had been killed. But he made the decision to forgive his persecutors.

In 2006 he published his testimony in the book Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, which became an international bestseller. Today Immaculée Ilibagiza works at the UN and walks the world preaching forgiveness and Marian faith as a response to hatred.

2. Franz Jägerstätter: the peasant who said no to Hitler (Austria, 1943)

Franz Jägerstätter was born on 20 May 1907 in Sankt Radegund, a small town in Upper Austria. He was a simple man: peasant, father of three small daughters and sacristan of the parish church. But he had an extraordinary faith and a very concrete Marian devotion: he regularly traveled to the Marian sanctuary of Altötting and prayed the Rosary in the middle of the field as he plowed.

When in 1943 he was called to the ranks by the Nazi army, Jägerstätter refused to serve. It was not cowardice: it had been mobilized already in 1940 and returned home. He refused to participate in a war he considered unfair and criminal. He was perfectly clear that his decision would cost him his life.

The military court offered him an exit: if he signed a role, he would not be forced to fight. He rejected the offer. He was tried on 6 July 1943 at the Reichskriegsgericht in Charlottenburg and sentenced to death. On 9 August 1943, he was beheaded by guillotine in Brandenburg-Göden prison, aged 36.

During his months in prison, Jägerstätter wrote dozens of letters to his wife and his parish priest. In all of them his Marian devotion appears as the axis of his strength. He was beatified on 26 October 2007 in Linz, Austria, by Pope Benedict XVI, who approved the decree of martyrdom in June of that year. The film A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019) recrea su historia.

3. Antonietta Meo, «Nennolina»: la niña de seis años que escribía cartas a Jesús (Roma, 1930–1937)

Antonietta Meo was born on December 15, 1930 in Rome, within a middle-class family. She was a cheerful, intelligent and very loved girl for her partners. At the age of four he began to write - with the help of his mother - letters to Jesus and the Virgin Mary. When he was five, an osteosarcoma was detected in his right leg. It had to be amputated.

Antonietta soportó la operación y los dolores que siguieron con una serenidad que asombraba a médicos y enfermeras. Continuó escribiendo sus cartas desde la cama del hospital. En una de ellas, dirigida a la Virgen, escribió: «Querida Mamá del Cielo, haz que yo sea buena y que esté siempre contenta, aunque me duela mucho.» En total escribió más de cien cartas antes de morir el 3 de julio de 1937, con seis años y seis meses.

Los teólogos que estudiaron sus escritos los calificaron de «extraordinarios» para una niña de esa edad, con conceptos místicos que superaban con creces su nivel de instrucción. El Papa Juan Pablo II abrió su causa de beatificación, y en diciembre de 2007 el Papa Benedicto XVI aprobó el decreto que la reconoce como Venerable, declarando «heroicas» sus virtudes. Es actualmente la persona más joven en proceso de beatificación en la historia de la Iglesia Católica.

4. Chiara Badano: «Si tú lo quieres, Jesús, yo también lo quiero» (Italia, 1971–1990)

Chiara Badano nació el 29 de octubre de 1971 en Sassello, Liguria. Era una joven deportista, extrovertida y apasionada por la vida. A los nueve años entró en el Movimiento de los Focolares, donde recibió el apodo de «Luce» (Luz), dado por la fundadora Chiara Lubich.

Con dieciséis años le fue diagnosticado un osteosarcoma, el mismo tipo de cáncer óseo que había padecido Antonietta Meo. El dolor era insoportable. Pero Chiara respondió a la noticia con una frase que se convertiría en su lema: «Si tú lo quieres, Jesús, yo también lo quiero.» Desde el diagnóstico hasta su muerte, nunca dejó de rezar el Rosario ni de sonreír.

His friends, relatives and doctors who attended her unanimously testified to a peace and joy that had no human explanation. During the two years of his agony, his room became a place of pilgrimage: people from all over Italy, including priests and young people in crisis of faith, came to see him and were transformed.

Murió el 7 de octubre de 1990, el día de la fiesta de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, con dieciocho años. Sus últimas palabras fueron: «Adiós. Estad alegres porque yo lo estoy.» Fue beatificada el 25 de septiembre de 2010 en Roma por el Papa Benedicto XVI. El milagro reconocido para su beatificación fue la curación inexplicable de un niño llamado Mattia.

5. The Rosary soldiers in World War II

The testimony of the soldiers of different nations who attributed their survival to the Rosary during World War II is a phenomenon documented in hundreds of letters preserved in family and ecclesiastical archives. American, Polish, Italian, Catholic and Filipino soldiers wrote to their mothers or wives about how the rosary they were wearing had literally saved their lives: bullets that stopped in the chain, wounds that did not heal medically, comrades that did not survive while they were unharmed.

El caso más documentado es el de los soldados de la «Legión del Rosario» promovida por el padre Patrick Peyton, el «sacerdote del Rosario», quien organizó transmisiones de radio en Estados Unidos durante la guerra bajo el lema «La familia que reza unida, permanece unida». Miles de familias americanas se comprometieron a rezar el Rosario diariamente por sus hijos en el frente. El padre Peyton recibió durante y después de la guerra cientos de cartas de soldados y familias que atribuían las supervivencias al rosario familiar.

Father Peyton, born in Ireland in 1909, was beatified on 26 June 2021 in Knock, Ireland, the same Marian sanctuary where he had prayed in his childhood. His cause of beatification accumulated testimonies from thousands of families who had experienced extraordinary changes through the family Rosary.

O Virgin Mary, Mother of the simple and the humble, you who were present in the most difficult moments of the last century, continue to accompany the men and women of this century with your tenderness as Mother. Amen.