Banneux: the house in the Ardenas

Bannux is a small village in the Belgian Ardenas, about 25 kilometres from Liège, between forests and hills. In January 1933, it was so far apart that it was barely on the maps. Its few families lived from agriculture and work in the mines and factories in the Liège basin. It was the Interwar Europe: the crack of 29 had sunk the economies, the unemployment was devastating, and hunger hit the most vulnerable hard.

In this context of material poverty and social crisis, the Virgin chose a girl from a humble family away from religious practice to convey a message of love and comfort addressed to the poor of the world.

Mariette Beco: the girl of the agnostic father

Mariette Beco was born on March 25, 1921, the feast of the Annunciation, in Bannux. She was the eldest of seven brothers, daughter of Julien Beco, worker and agnostic convinced that she never laid foot in a church, and Louise Beco, a woman of weak and unpractical faith. The family lived in trouble. Mariette was not a particularly devout girl: she was in an irregular way attending the catechism and the parish priest knew her little.

Nothing in Mariette made it presagiarized what was to happen on the night of January 15, 1933. She was a normal, field girl with no special religious inclination. It was precisely for this reason that his testimony was so difficult to ignore: it was not the profile of those who sought spiritual protagonism.

The first apparition: the night of January 15, 1933

It was 7: 00 in the afternoon. Mariette was lying at the window of her house, looking for her little brother who had not returned yet. The night was cold and snowy. As he looked at the garden, he saw something that left her still: a figure of a bright woman, of extraordinary beauty, dressed in white with a blue stripe on her waist and a golden rose on her right foot, standing in the garden, with her arms open and smiling.

Mariette called her mother, "Maman, there's a beautiful lady in the garden." The mother looked, saw nothing, and sent the girl to bed. Mariette obeyed, but kept looking out the window. The figure was still there. Then Mariette went out into the garden, kneeling on the snow, and began to pray the rosary. The figure called her, but at that time the mother, scared, dragged her back home and locked the door. The apparition had lasted a few minutes, but Mariette was transformed.

The eight apparitions: energy - March 1933

• 15 January 1933 First apparition, in the garden. The Virgin appears bright. Mariette wants to get close, but the mother stops her.
• 18 January 1933 Second apparition. The Virgin takes Mariette in ecstasy to a small source on the edge of the road and says, "Put your hands in the water." It is the source that the locals will soon know as "the source of the Virgin."
• 19 January 1933 Third apparition. The Virgin declares: "This source is reserved for me." Mariette, in ecstasy, walks barefoot on the frozen snow without feeling cold.
• 20 January 1933 Fourth apparition. The Virgin says, "I am the Virgin of the Poor." It's the first time he's been presented under this name.
• 11 February 1933 Fifth apparition, at Our Lady of Lourdes's party. Our Lady says, "I believe in me, I believe in you." The apparition coincides exactly with the date of the anniversary of the first apparition in Lourdes (February 11, 1858).
• 15 February 1933 Sixth apparition. Our Lady says, "I want a little chapel." Mariette doesn't understand: how can she, a poor girl, ask for a chapel to be built?
• 20 February 1933 Seventh apparition. Our Lady says, "I come to alleviate suffering."
• 2 March 1933 Eighth and last apparition. Our Lady says, "Bye." Mariette cries. Our Lady adds, "See you soon." And it disappears. Mariette never saw the Virgin again, but she retained an inner peace that accompanied her all her life.

"I am the Virgin of the Poor"

The name that Our Lady chose to identify herself in Bannux is one of the most expressive in Marian history. "The Virgin of the Poor" is not just a poetic title: it is a declaration of belonging. The Virgin did not claim to be the Immaculate (Lourdes), nor the Queen of the Rosary (Fatima), nor the Mother of the Word (Kibeho). In Bannux, in the middle of the economic crisis of the 1930s, before a poor girl of an agnostic father, she chose to define herself by her relationship with those who have nothing.

"I am the Virgin of the Poor. The source is reserved for all nations, to relieve the sick."
- Our Lady's words to Mariette Beco, January 1933

The message is of a disconcerting simplicity. There are no great apocalyptic revelations, no secrets. Only one concrete promise: there is a source, it is here, it is for the poor and the sick all over the world.

The source: the heart of Bannux

The source that the Virgin pointed to Mariette in the second apparition was a simple spring by the road, with nothing special in sight. Since 1933, thousands of pilgrims have drank of that water, bathed in it, brought it to the sick all over the world. The documented cases of healing are numerous, although the Church has been cautious in the attribution of miracles to the Bannux source specifically.

What is unanswered is the spiritual effect. Bannux quickly became a place where the sick, the marginalized, the desperate found something that they did not find elsewhere: the certainty that they were welcome, that it was not necessary to be rich or important or pious to be received by the Virgin of the Poor.

Research: Father Jamin and the Diocese of Liège

The apparitions aroused immediate scepticism, both in the Church and among the neighbours. Father Louis Jamin, a priest of the nearest parish, was initially skeptical. But Mariette's behavior during the apparitions - ecstasy, barefoot walking on the snow without feeling cold, eyes fixed on something invisible - forced her to take the facts seriously. He began to question the girl systematically and to document her statements.

The diocese of Liège created an episcopal commission of research. The theologians and doctors examined Mariette, studied the circumstances of each apparition, sought possible fraudulent motivations. They did not find any: the Beco family was poor, the father remained unbelieving (although his position changed over the years), and Mariette never sought or accepted money for his history.

The adoption of 1949: the Marian year of Belgium

On August 22, 1949, Bishop Louis- Joseph Kerkhofs of the Diocese of Liège officially approved the apparitions of Bannux. Three weeks earlier, on July 2 of that same year, the Bishop of Namur had approved the apparitions of Beauraing. Two Belgian apparitions, separated by just 80 kilometres, approved in the same year: it was what the press called the "Marian Year of Belgium."

The approval of Bannux was ratified by the Holy See. In the statement, Bishop Kerkhofs noted that the facts of Bannux met the criteria established for the recognition of supernatural phenomena: the messages were in conformity with the Catholic faith, the seer did not present psychiatric pathology, and there was no personal or economic motivation to explain the testimonies.

Mariette Beco: an ordinary life after the extraordinary

Mariette Beco lived a discreet life away from the protagonism. He married in 1944, had children, worked as a nurse. He never exploded his seer condition or sought the media focus. The few times he spoke publicly of his experiences, he did so with a simplicity that the journalists found disconcerting: he did not exaggerate, he did not dramatize, he told what he had seen as the one who told something normal.

He died on 2 December 2011 in Bannux, at the age of 90. The priest who attended her in her last days described a woman in peace, without fear, convinced that she would see that "beautiful lady" who had smiled at her in the snow garden 78 years earlier.

Bannux and Beauraing: the Belgian phenomenon of 1932-1933

The temporary coincidence of two Marian apparitions approved in the same country in the same winter is an unparalleled phenomenon in history. Beauraing began on 29 November 1932; Bannux on 15 January 1933. The two occurred in a deeply Catholic country in a devastating economic and social crisis. The messages, although different in their form, converge in the essential: prayer, conversion, help the sick and the poor.

Some theologians have reflected on whether both apparitions were part of the same divine response to the historical moment. What seems clear is that Belgium of 1932-1933 was a unique territory.

El santuario de Banneux hoy

The Bannux- Notre- Dame shrine receives between 500,000 and a million pilgrims from all over the world each year. The small chapel requested by the Virgin was built in 1933, and since then the enclosure has grown to host several churches, a great splendid outdoor, houses for the sick and pilgrims, and the original source, which continues to flow. The sanctuary has a special presence of Dutch, German, and Eastern European pilgrims in addition to the Belgians.

The devotion to the Virgin of the Poor has spread throughout the world, especially in countries with large pockets of poverty. In Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, the title resonates strongly in communities that are recognized in those words: "The source is reserved for all nations, to relieve the sick."

«I come to aliviar el sufrimiento. »
- Our Lady of Bannux, seventh apparition, February 20, 1933