Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

Father Laval and the Virgin of Peace in Mangareva

Mangareva, islas Gambier (Polynesia)

At the south-east end of Polynesia, where the Pacific seems never to end, are the Gambier Islands, and among them Mangareva. From 1834, Father Honoré Laval, priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, came. His very name was inscribed with Marian devotion, and that devotion marked all his work on those distant islands.

What is historically documented is the deep Marian imprint of that mission. Under Laval and his companions, Mangareva became one of the most fervent Catholic centers in Polynesia, with a catechesis and a very careful liturgy. Churches, chapels and altars dedicated to the Virgin were raised, in particular under titles like Our Lady of Peace and the Immaculate. The most visible monument of that endeavour is the great church of Rikitea, which is surprising for its size on such a small island, a sign of people who wanted to give God and his Mother the best it had. And the Rosary, as in so many Pacific picputian missions, was extended as daily prayer of the people.

Here it is necessary to be prudent and to distinguish. The ancient missionary chronicles speak of rapid conversions attributed to the intercession of Mary, of impressive Marian processions and of the veneration of images brought by the parents. They are beautiful stories, but their most prodigious details come from printed chronicles of the congregation, not easily verifiable today, and about a punctual Marian miracle with all its verified data we must simply say that it does not contain. To adorn what cannot be proved would be to lack the truth and the Virgin herself.

What we can say, and enough, is that in those islands lost in the ocean an intense Marian faith flourished: a cathedral for the Virgin in the middle of the sea, and a people who learned to pray the Rosary in their own language.

Mangareva reminds us that love for Mary knows no distances or ocean borders. Where the Rosary came, Peace also came, for that is the title with which it was invoked there: Our Lady of Peace, Mother who brings together the peoples around her Son, one account after another.