Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The spring where the first Catholics of Java were born

Sendangsono (Indonesia) (1904)

On the island of Java, near the village of Banjaroyo, in the regency of Kulon Progo, there is a place of water and shadow that the Javanese call Sendingsono - of shush, manantial, y sleep, the tree under whose cup the fountain sprouts -. There in 1904 the Jesuit missionary padre Francis of Lith He baptized a first group of javanese converted to Catholicism, in that natural spring. It was a very small seed in an immense and Muslim-majority country.

Over time, that corner of prayer grew. Towards the following decades a gruta marijuana inspired by Lourdes, and was born the present shrine of Sendangsono, with its Via Cruces, its chapels and its spaces of silence. The Indonesian Episcopal Conference and Fides Agency describe it as one of the most beautiful and popular Marian places in the country, a goal of pilgrims who come walking from afar.

It is documented that the faithful come with their intentions, thanksgivings, and promises, participate in Mass and confessions, and pray the Rosary. The devotion is lived with a deep Javanese identity: their songs, their language, their gestures. Mary accompanies the growth of a small Catholic minority here, a minority that has learned to entrust itself to the Mother.

By honesty it should be said that concrete miracles, exvotes or particular cures no se detallan in accessible sources; although in every Marian sanctuary they often abound personal testimonies, they are not described, and are not invented. What does shine is the essential: a spring where a few received the water of baptism, and today is a source of prayer for an entire people.