Apparitions of Our Lady of La Salette

La Salette

(Diocese of Grenoble, France)

The appearance on September 19, 1846 was unique and relatively brief: perhaps less than half an hour. It nevertheless deeply marked the lives of the visionaries, despite their persecution. The message they received primarily consisted of the Virgin’s silent tears over the sin destroying the world: a fundamental message that resonated widely, reaching the highest levels of the Church (Pius IX and Leo XIII), and was supported by great converted intellectuals who breathed Christian intelligence and culture into France at the beginning of the 20th century: Huysmans, Léon Bloy and his associate Jacques Maritain, Verlaine, Péguy, Claudel, Massignon, Bernanos.

It was also a sign of contradiction, especially through the secrets that the Holy Office prohibited from being disclosed to calm the waters and the visionaries. The Bishop of Grenoble, Monsignor De Bruillard, esteemed them, but his successor, a powerful man with great political sense, appointed by the entourage of future Napoleon III shortly after his coup d’état, excluded and persecuted the visionaries, whose secret stigmatized the emperor (“a clipped eagle,” said Maximin), who later allied himself with Garibaldi against the Pope.

For a long time, official tradition repressed the visionaries until the centenary. The basic historical book declared Melanie hysterical, in an atmosphere that future John XXIII, then Apostolic Nuncius in France, pacified by coming to celebrate the centenary. It was a lengthy dispute blocked by a decree imposing silence between those defending the secret, whose authentic text remained unknown until the threshold of the third millennium, and those who considered it a digression from the visionaries’ statements. The official text of the secret was recorded in all legal forms by Monsignor Genouillac since 1851 and presented to Pope Pius XII.

Recently this was rediscovered by Michel Corteville, allowing clarification of this issue. This research mainly demonstrates the sincerity of the visionaries, who are unequal in their depths but whose lives were entirely devoted to fulfilling the mission entrusted to them by the Virgin: “Make my people know.”

Maximin, who died young, could not fulfill his vocation as a priest and later as a doctor. Melanie, after being excluded from La Salette and exiled to England, went to Greece and Italy, where she gained wide attention. She was adopted by the now Saint Hannibal Maria di Francia (1851-1927) as a co-founder of his Order, which for this reason wanted her buried in the chapel of the nuns he had founded with her. The volumes demonstrate, based on indisputable documents, that Melanie was a true mystic and that the two visionaries had the rare merit of remaining humbly faithful to faith, obedience, discretion, avoiding controversies.

**Melanie’s Experience and the Unveiling of La Salette’s Message**Melanie became subject to the same negative actions experienced by those who, with far inferior historical evidence and proof, defended the visionaries and their consistency amidst inconsistent persecutions. This brief introduction is based on unpublished documents, historical foundations that restore basic and essentially definitive proofs of La Salette’s message, the truth of the visionaries, and the reasons behind the persistent defamation of them until now. This historical study has withstood any challenge. Opponents merely hid its content and reduced it to a rear-guard battle of fanaticism. Bloy and Maritain, the latter also an ambassador from France to the Vatican, despite Paul VI’s great esteem for him, failed to secure the publication of the compiled volumes he had written without yet possessing the essential documents for defending La Salette and the visionaries.**The Single Apparition**On September 19, 1846, Melanie Calvat (age 14) and Maximin Giraud (age 11), two shepherds from the Corps, climbed together to the pastures of the village of La Salette. They gathered some flowers, built a stone hut, ate bread and cheese, and fell asleep in violation of rules and habits. Around three in the afternoon, Melanie suddenly awoke: where is the flock? Descending from the valley, they saw two cows lower down. Returning to their beds, Melanie then noticed a brilliant light and called Maximin. He came to her, and in turn, saw the light: both progressively discerned a lady.**The Visionary’s Message**She was sitting with her head in her hands. Then she straightened her head, her face wet with tears, and looked at them: “Come closer,” she said, “do not be afraid! I am here to give you great news.”She stood up; her attire was unusual: a crucifix gleamed on her chest. After the message, which contained these essential points:“You peasants work on Sundays, your carters blaspheme God’s name. And you, and others during Lent go to the butcher like dogs. Your sin will cause the loss of your crops: the wheat is already rotting, the potatoes are rotting… I warn you in advance as your mother did: do not sow your wheat this year; it would be lost, and you would have nothing left. Famine is coming, accompanied by disease: it will kill your children. That’s why I weep. For a long time, I have suffered for you […], and you pay no attention […]. This weighs heavily on my Son’s arm.”The future depends on men. The Lady says this in imaginative language: “If they convert, stones and rocks will turn into wheat, and the potatoes will already be sown.”> In the heart of this public message, she entrusts to the children a secret they are to keep until further notice. She concludes: > >”Well, my children, you will make it known to my people.”That same night, the boys tell their masters about the apparition. The next day, they are sent to speak with the parish priest, Reverend Perrin, who announces it in his sermon. The pilgrimage begins in the afternoon, and the message will be discussed.Bishop De Bruillard of Grenoble waits cautiously. His metropolitan, Cardinal Bonald, Archbishop of Lyon, is opposed. After sending the secret to Pius IX, who welcomed it favorably, Bishop De Bruillard recognized the apparition in 1851.Monsignor Genouillac, promoted by Napoleon III’s entourage, soon learned that the seers’ secret was severe for the emperor, calling him “the clipped eagle” destined for decline, which came in 1870. A delicate situation, as Pope Pius IX firmly supported La Salette and asked him to act against his detractors. With his political genius, Archbishop Genouillac found an appropriate solution and confirmed the authenticity of La Salette, despite the doubts he had confided to Cardinal Donnet on May 23, 1855, which he denied when revealed by this latter.He supported the pilgrimage founded by the priests of La Salette but dissociated himself from the seers, removing Maximin from the diocesan seminary, refusing the decision of the nuns who admitted Melanie at the end of her novitiate, and then exiled her and set conditions for her to be kept away. A beautiful formula was found to express his intention before the multitude of pilgrims on September 19, 1855: “The mission of the shepherds has ended, that of the Church begins.” This formula became the official rule of action until today. The message of La Salette is the Virgin’s tears and a call to conversion. As the secret was an ineffable message given in vision, not in words, the seers always had great difficulty translating it into communicable terms, given their limited cultural resources.Whenever they wrote it without referring to the previous version, they started from what penetrated into their hearts and expressed the essential according to the question asked and the principle of idea association, variable according to circumstances.It is a simple matter of historical truth to do justice to the visionaries, each in their own degree, where the discrimination exercised against them made them objects of slander *a priori*. Maximin was called stupid and mean. He loved to drink with friends, but no one accused him of being drunk. As for his intelligence, it allowed him to complete secondary studies, thanks to a priest, and carry them on to the major seminary, from which he was dismissed as a visionary, not for intellectual insufficiency. He also did two years of medicine to become a health officer, but was rejected by his most prestigious professor not for intellectual deficiency, but for the following reason: “As a doctor, you will always be in a delicate situation, because people will come to you as a visionary, not as a doctor.”Honestly, following this advice, he gave up, which prevented him from obtaining financial support for his future. Maximin was fond of good living, impulsive. He loved to tell lies and was reproached for it. But that made part of his good humor. Despite and against all, he showed his intelligence and writing ability by publishing his memoirs with dignity.Melanie was presented as an aberration. It was repeated that her stigmas were self-mutilation or the effect of her hysteria. In fact, these stigmas are attested throughout her life by over twenty witnesses. Her younger sister, who did not know how to explain her bloody wounds, interpreted them in her own way, thinking she had cut herself with a knife. But it is just a matter of interpretation, and dozens of witnesses, including Saint Hannibal Maria di Francia, recognized their authenticity.The series of testimonies is irrefutable, and it is purely by artifice that the free interpretation of the sister is reexamined to avoid considering other testimonies. If Father Jaouen, in the book of the centenary, applies psychological and psychoanalytic schemes to Melanie, his disciple and admirer, Father Stern, honestly acknowledged that this term is unjustified.What allowed to refer to Melanie’s balanced, calm, meditative nature, and fortunately endowed with great prudence, was the fact that in her youth she had suffered multiple attacks and tortures from the devil, especially during her novitiate, when the sisters perfectly identified the phenomenon, thanks to their authentic spiritual experience, appreciated by close collaboration with numerous exorcists.What allows for the defamation of this person as unstable and unbalanced is the fact that, like in the case of Maximin, and more radically, she was torn from her environment, La Salette, and the nuns who formed and accepted her into their community. She was forcibly sent to the nuns of Valence, and accused of throwing some papers over the convent wall to ask for her release from this forced imprisonment. In reality, she was protesting on behalf of the most basic human rights. Similarly in England, where she was exiled even further to deprive her of any hope of return, and so on. When she managed to return to France by shipwreck, La Salette was forbidden to go there. She managed to find work with some nuns from Marseille as a teacher, although illiterate until the age of seventeen, and for two years she did her job well. Then, with another nun, she was sent to Greece without any preparation to revive the fortunes of a school, which she successfully restored. In Italy she was well received and appreciated by several now beatified priests. She was received in a private audience by Pope Leo XIII, who wanted to send her back to La Salette to build the religious order that he believed had been given the mission to found.More prudently, clarifying to the Pope, she objected: “but the bishop will not want to receive me.” Leo XIII summoned the bishop, who confirmed this opposition. The Pope sent Melanie to the cardinals of his Congregations to help her realize her own project, which had already been partially realized with Father Hannibal through the collaboration of a co-founder, and better than Maximin had done. In fact, despite not having followed secondary studies, the visionary knows how to write and express herself using her own reduced vocabulary, reaching the heights of mysticism.The apparitions of Our Lady of La Salette and her message of conversion fit into the theological horizon traced by the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II, which presents Mary as an intercessor and merciful mother who accompanies humanity on its return to God.Deepen your studies: explore Mariology, Marian theology, Marian apparitions, and a Postgraduate degree in Mariology.

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