Litmanova, Eslovaquia. La Pureza Inmaculada

During these apparitions the Virgin Mary encourages the youths to attend Church services. She asks them to offer sacrifices combined with prayers in reparation for their sins, the sins of Slovakia, and the sins of the world. When the girls asked how she called herself, she replied: I am "Untainted Purity."

The apparitions allegedly began in August 1990. The Sunday of the apparition begins with a procession lead by the two teens from in front of the village church up to the mountainside chanting hymns and reciting the rosary. Once they are inside the little hut on the summit, the begin saying Our Fathers, Hail Mary's and the Golden Our Father. Once again they recite the Holy Rosary. It is typically during the recitation of the Rosary that the Virgin Mary appears and joins the young ladies in prayer. She then speaks with them at the conclusion of the prayers. Then after she leaves them the Divine Liturgy is celebrated by the parish priest. After the Liturgy the girls announce the message of the Blessed Mother over the microphone to all those gathered.

Afterwards the pilgrims are free to go over to the source of water which the Blessed Mother has blessed and draw water to carry home for spiritual healing.

The Diocese of Presov is investigating the validity of this apparition. We await and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church.

Here follows the history of this apparition in the simple words of these two young girls:

The Messages of the Blessed Mother

"I am Untainted Purity, help me to preserve a pure heart!"

On September 8, 1991 the microphone fell silent, which the Litmanova's visionaries Katka Ceselkova and Ivetka Korcakova had announced to the pilgrims their encounters with the Blessed Mother and her spiritual messages. The Bishop's Commission, founded with the purpose of examining the messages of the Mother of God interpreted by the girls, interfered with the publication of these messages. Today, after ending this restriction, we publish the messages of all apparitions which occurred between September 1991 and April 1992. We believe that the Blessed Mother's call for spiritual renewal will be for the reader a desirable and effectual motivation.

On the question of the authenticity of the apparitions, the Greek Catholic Ordinary in Presov, Bishop Jan Hirka wrote (abridged):

"Recently we have received many petitions asking our opinion about the events in Litmanova where it is said that the Blessed Mother appears...Jesus Christ and the Blessed Mother sometimes use individuals to communicate in extraordinary form -- appearing to people -- to call attention to some sacred truth or duties which have been neglected, or in order to avert punishments. This is in our great God's plan which we should with gratitude and willingness receive. But it is also true that through such communications there can rise errors, and from these rise self delusion and fraud, and other traps of evil spirits. Therefore, the church is very attentive in matters of apparitions in order not to make such mistakes in self-delusion or fraud and in order not to mistake such uncertain apparitions. As true apparitions of God. But, through all this, everyone must advance according to their best conscience. If the apparitions are true, the Saviour Himself or the Blessed Mother will take care of the accuracy of their apparitions and then will not be denied forever. I want to stress that at first we must refute and exert a critical attitude which will enable us later on the truth to reveal itself more clearly if this is a genuine supernatural apparition. Speaking about the doubting of St. Thomas, St. Augustine said that he was more a proof of faith than any of the other apostles. And rightfully so for the Saviour Himself acceded to St. Thomas' doubt who can therefore strengthen the faith of weaker people. Bishop Jan Hirka


August 5, 1991

We went up to the hillside - Katka Ceselkova, Ivetka Korcakova and Mikulas Ceselka. It was morning about seven o'clock. On the hill we played games all day long, we made a fire and we roasted some bacon and sang. The Liturgy was celebrated in the church at 5:00 p.m., but we did not want to go home to attend so we stayed up on the hill a little longer. At about 6:00 p.m., we heard a crackling sound in the forest near where we had made the fire. The sound was at first soft, then it intensified. We went inside our hut - Ivetka and Mitko lay down on their beds because they were tired. I (Katka) heard a noise as if someone was walking around the hut. I shouted "Ivetka, shut the door, I'm afraid!" We closed the door and then we heard a noise as if someone was rattling something made of tin. The noises became louder and we became so afraid that it took our breath away. After a while we heard yet a stronger knocking as if someone threw a lot of wood down from the high rocky hill. We were terrified! At this time, Mitko told us we should pray because we were afraid as the priest told him that once during a religious class. We prayed the "Our Father" three times, "Hail Mary" and then the "Golden Our Father" three times (these prayers we knew, and Mitko was praying some other prayers.) Suddenly, I (Ivetka), had the feeling to pray "Mary, Our Mother, protect us under your mantle." I prayed it three times (this prayer I had never said before), and then prayed "Guardian Angel"....We started to promise that Katka would begin going to religious class, that she would go to the church and that she would go to holy confession. We were sorry for our sins and at this moment there was a glow but we did not pay attention to this because we thought that it was from the sun. We did not say anything - because we thought it was something from our imagination, or out of fear. We made ourselves a pledge that during this week we would go to church every day! At this moment our fear left. We were sitting on the bed and suddenly a glow appeared in the middle of the room and we saw the Blessed Mother. We tried to see whether this was really her! She sat on the bench and she was listening to us. We were staring at the bench and Katka said "I see the Blessed Mother." "I see her too." said Ivetka. At this moment, we all ran out of the room. We left the place in a hurry, we did not even lock the door, we only ran home. The Blessed Mother followed us on the way, she stayed about two steps behind us. When we turned around, we saw her behind us. She accompanied us to the roadside cross. There, she knelt down and prayed. Then, she went behind us and then she started to gradually disappear. On the way home we were still afraid. I turned to look and I saw the Blessed Mother in front of my house for the last time. Ivetka saw the Blessed Mother in front of her uncle's house. She did not speak to us at the time. She was dressed in white dress, she had on a blue cloak, a blue transparent veil and on her head she wore a crown and in her hand she held a rosary. We returned home frightened. I went to my room and was quiet. Ivetka went home and told her mother about everything. Her mother did not believe her and so they went to Katka's house to ask her whether it was true. We both started to cry because they did not believe us. Ivetka's mother believed a little bit. When Katka's mother went to work the next day, she prayed "Blessed Mother, give me some visible sign that the girls are not lying>" That very evening she had a dream. 'I saw the Blessed Mother with a green garland.' 'I asked her why she had a green garland.' 'She replied "because I am a Virgin and I have a pure heart."' Next I asked her whether it was true what the girls had said. The Blessed Mother relied, "Yes, do not doubt anything, but believe it all." At the end of August, Ivetka, Katka, Mitko, Ivetka's mother and father went up to the hill again. When they got to the hut, only Ivetka, Katka and Mitko went into the room. "We asked our parents to leave us alone." We prayed Our Father and Hail Mary three times, Golden Our Father three times and after that "O Mary, our Mother protect us under your mantle" for three times." We sat on the bed and in a moment we saw a mist and in this we bean to distinguish the outline of the Blessed Mother, but she was hardly visible. She did not speak to us and did not leave any message. She disappeared into the fog and we ran out to tell our parents what we had seen, that it was really the Blessed Mother! Mitko did not see the Blessed Mother, the two of us only saw her -- Katka and Ivetka."

Superviviente de la II Guerra Mundial

VETERAN RECALLS BATTLE OF THE BULGE AND ALLEGED APPARITIONS OF VIRGIN MARY


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A Connecticut man who miraculously lived through the Battle of the Bulge and other close calls during World War Two attributes his survival to the Rosary and says that he has seen the Blessed Mother several times since returning from the war -- most recently two years ago, when Mary allegedly asked him to pray for the Church.

The former soldier is John J. Kolenberg of Stamford, who credits daily recitation of the Rosary for getting him through the bloodiest battle of the war, one that lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945 and cost 19,000 Americans their lives, including all but a dozen or so from the estimated 200 in his tank company, which was part of the vaunted Third Armored Spearhead Division.

Kolenberg -- who was raised by Christian Brothers in an orphanage -- came into the battle as a replacement the previous October and entered through Normandy. Although he often gave his rosaries away at Christmas time, that year he decided to keep it and had it with him that fateful Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the following day -- when three different tanks were shot from under him.

"Our division suffered the most casualties," says Kolenberg, who had made a promise to study for the priesthood. "I was in the middle of battle all the time, one of the first tanks into Cologne -- which was totally devastated. But through it all I never suffered a scratch. I was praying the Rosary all the time."

That a heavenly hand was guiding his way was apparent in the "coincidences" that saved his life, including the time he was the second of 15 tanks sent into a small German town called Laglaise. His tank ran out of gas while the one ahead of him entered town and was gunned down, with all inside killed.

At another point Kolenberg was supposed to be the first in a line of several tanks, but a mistake placed him in the fifth and again the first one was destroyed and the soldiers all casualties.

Indeed, there were 81,000 American casualties in all during the historic battle, including 23,000 who were captured -- the gruesome nature of the battle evident in the photos of other soldiers [see left]. Fulfilling his promise, Kolenberg entered a seminary in Conyers, Georgia, after the war, and there recorded a strange experience. The year was 1953. The day was July 16, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

"I was in college and I decided I had made so many promises to be a priest during the war that I joined the Trappists," he says. "I was praying the Rosary in the garden and there was this tree the size of an apple tree and there I saw a sphere of light, a little bigger than a basketball, like the moon, and I had the impression that someone was staring at me."

The former soldier, now 78, is not sure who or what that was. He walked around the tree and saw that it was white and gray. Finally he headed back to the monastery but as he turned back for a last look he saw a figure staring at him. He couldn't quite make it out, and it scared him. "All I could see was one eye, it was like one eye, and I didn't know what to make of it," says Kolenberg.

He still doesn't. Was that the Blessed Mother, or some kind of other manifestation? We'll leave that to your own discernment, as also the rest of Kolenberg's story. Decades later, the area around the monastery would lend itself to many other such claims. But this was at the monastery itself, which Kolenberg left a year later -- eventually getting married in 1957 and raising six children. He also became a teacher in an exclusive private school in Greenwich.

Twenty years after the first unusual phenomenon, in 1973, on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Kolenberg says that he saw the Virgin Mary on the way to picking up his family for Mass. It was in an area of Stamford known as Shippan Point and it started when he spotted two lights rising from nearby water -- Long Island Sound -- as he waited at a red light.

"When the light changed and I had to start going again it looked like the Virgin Mary," maintains the veteran, who ironically was ready to take his family to Mass at Our Lady of the Sea. "She came within ten feet of me, white and blue rays from her hands."

Kolenberg consulted a priest in a confessional booth about it but didn't see anything again for two decades -- in fact, once again, twenty years from the previous event. This time it was 1993 and he says he saw her in his own home, weeping as he recounts an event he still finds awesome.

"It was May 5 and she was all dressed in blue," says Kolenberg. "She was absolutely beautiful, maybe 5'7" and there five or six minutes. I couldn't understand why she was there. She never spoke, and all I could say was 'Mary!' I knelt down and said a Hail Mary and when I got up she was gone."

The event was lucid enough that Kolenberg went to see then-Bishop Walter Curtis about it, and the bishop advised him to to "pray very hard and ask God for a sign." That "sign" may have come in 2002, when the Blessed Mother returned again -- more than ten years before he expected her, in accordance with the previous 20-year time frame -- and this time materialized, allegedly, as Our Lady of Sorrows. This time she also spoke.

"She was very sad and just said, 'I want you to pray for the Church,'" claims Kolenberg, his voice breaking with emotion. "She spoke of a number of things -- about how so few were going to Confession, how many people were not in a state of grace when they received Communion, and she talked about Mass, how people were not attentive. It all had to do with the Church. She was very sad. I never saw her like that before."

It was at the height of the priest-abuse scandal and she was dressed in "white gray."

A lay Carmelite for forty years, Kolenberg reads the breviary and prays incessantly, often for the Church. He says that if he lives long enough, he expects another apparition in 2013 -- and hopes to have a million Rosary beads to present her. On average he prays the Rosary for five hours each day, which adds up to a thousand or so Hail Marys. "I want that to be my gift," he says.