Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"The forgotten Virgin who returned: the Rosary of St. Nicholas"

San Nicolás de los Arroyos (Argentina) (1983- 1990)

In the city of San Nicolás de los Arroyos, on the banks of Paraná, a simple woman named Gladys Quiroga de Motta began, on 25 September 1983, to refer to meetings with the Virgin Mary. Throughout the following years, she would collect an extensive set of messages, and the Lady would have been presented to her under the advocation of Our Lady of the Rosary. The name was not casual: the heart of all this devotion is the Rosary.

One of the most loved stories of this story has to do with an ancient image of the Virgin of the Rosary, which is said to have been relegated and almost forgotten in the city, kept and out of the sight of the faithful. Devotion regained that image and put it back at the center of the people's prayer, as if the Virgin herself had wanted to take back the place that had been spared her.

Conviene distinguir aquí lo documentado de lo devocional. Está documentado que existió un proceso de apariciones atribuidas a Gladys entre 1983 y 1990, con cerca de mil ochocientos mensajes recopilados y publicados con imprimátur, y que en mayo de 2016 el obispo Héctor Cardelli firmó un decreto reconociendo el carácter sobrenatural de los hechos. En cambio, detalles como el de «la imagen olvidada en el campanario» pertenecen al relato piadoso, repetido en la prensa religiosa, y no consta aquí una verificación independiente de archivo histórico local.

What does shine with its own light is the central place of the Rosary in this devotion. The Lady asked for a temple in her honor and directed the faithful towards that humble and constant prayer, so that St. Nicholas has become one of the great rosarian shrines of Argentina, where thousands of pilgrims pray each year to the Rosary to the Virgin who returned from her oblivion.