New York City, N.Y., May 7, 2017 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- “I remember it as well as I do last night.” Those were the words of an aged Irish immigrant named John Curry in 1940s New York, who had seen the apparitions at Knock, Ireland when just a boy.
Now, his remains will be re-interred at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in New York City.
“Like most of the witnesses, John Curry went on to live out his life in a quiet way, never highlighting what he experienced in Knock, unless asked to speak about it,” Father Richard Gibbons, rector of Ireland’s Our Lady of Knock Shrine, told CNA. “This shows a quiet, humble kind of faith which was characteristic of the Irish people.”
“He served Mass everyday right up until before his death and had an unwavering devotion to Our Lady and said that she never refused him anything that he asked for,” the priest said.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York will celebrate an 11 a.m. Mass of Thanksgiving May 13, followed by Curry’s reburial on the church’s grounds in Manhattan.
The apparition took place on the evening of Aug. 21, 1879 in the presence of fifteen men, women, and children, mainly from the village of Knock in County Mayo. They ranged in age from 5 to 74 years old.
Some of the witnesses reported figures that appeared to be the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John at the parish church’s gable wall. Amid luminous lights, they saw the figure of a lamb and a cross on an altar.
Curry’s older cousin, Patrick Hill, was at the vision too. He placed the young boy on his shoulders so he could see.
In the pouring rain, the witnesses stayed, praying the rosary.
When the Church launched an official inquiry in October 1879, young John Curry’s testimony was among the fifteen official witness testimonies. His first account is brief.
“The child says he saw images, beautiful images, the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph,” said the document, posted on the Knock shrine’s website. “He could state no more than that he saw the fine images and the light, and heard the people talk of them, and went upon the wall to see the nice things and the lights.”
Years later, in a 1936 letter to Fr. Dan Corcoran, who was then curate of Knock Parish, Curry said of the event: “I remember it as well as I do last night.”
Curry reaffirmed his testimony before a second Church inquiry held in New York in 1937. He described the figures:
“It appeared to me that they were alive, but they didn’t speak. One of the women there, Bridget Trench, kissed the Blessed Virgin’s feet and tried to put her arms around the feet but there was nothing there but the picture. I saw her do that. The figures were life-size and I will remember them till I go to my grave.”
Fr. Gibbons said the apparition took place at a troubled time for Ireland. Land reform efforts had provoked heated controversy and even violence, while scattered famines recalled the fearful times of Ireland’s Great Hunger.
This is the background of the traditional prayer: “Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to your people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow.”
“Our Lady of Knock was, and continues to be an icon of hope, forgiveness and compassion for all,” Fr. Gibbons said, calling the reburial “a wonderful opportunity” to recognize Curry.
“He, like many others at the time, was forced to emigrate in search of work and was unable to travel home again.”
Curry had emigrated to New York in 1897 at the age of 25, then was in London in 1900 before returning to the U.S. in 1911. He worked as railway laborer near Milwaukee, then moved to New York in the 1920s and worked an attendant at the City Hospital on what is now New York’s Roosevelt Island.
He never married.
When his health began to decline, he moved to live with the Little Sisters of the Poor on Long Island.
Not until shortly before the second inquiry began did he tell the sisters that he was one of the witnesses to the apparition at Knock.
Late in life, Curry would recount the stories of the apparition and of serving Mass for Archdeacon Bartholomew Cavanaugh, the parish priest of Knock. Just before the apparition began, the priest had completed a series one hundred Masses for the souls in Purgatory whom the Virgin Mary wished to be released.
Curry died in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Manhattan in 1943, aged 69. He was buried in an unmarked grave at Pine Lawn Cemetery in Long Island. Curry’s cousin, Patrick Hill, passed away in Boston in 1927 at the age of 60.
The modern-day rector of the shrine, Fr. Gibbons, spoke about Curry’s unmarked grave to Cardinal Dolan when the cardinal led a 2015 pilgrimage to Knock.
Initially, he asked the cardinal to help bless the grave when a gravestone was provided. The cardinal then offered to bring Curry’s remains to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. When this proved impossible, the grounds of the historic cathedral was chosen.
Fr. Gibbons said Knock is extremely grateful to the cardinal for his support and encouragement. In an unusual reversal, 130 pilgrims will be flying from Knock to New York City. Their numbers include some of Curry’s relatives.
Tom Beirne, a New York resident who is co-chairing the reburial committee, told CNA the reburial means that Curry “will finally get the recognition that he so greatly deserves at this point.”
He suggested that the reburial and focus on Our Lady of Knock would increase Marian devotion, combined with the centenary of the Marian apparition known as Our Lady of Fatima.
Beirne said Our Lady of Knock has continuing significance to Irish-Americans. He pointed to the St. Patrick’s Day Mass with Cardinal Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when the singer Cathy Maguire sang “an amazing rendition” of Dana Rosemary Scallon’s song “Our Lady of Knock”, which went viral on the internet.
Beirne said that St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral is “hugely significant” to the Irish community and the Irish-American Catholic fraternity the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which is assisting in the reburial.
“Archbishop John Hughes, ‘Dagger Hughes.’ called on the Ancient Order of Hibernians to physically defend St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on a couple of occasions against the planned destruction by Nativists and the ‘Know Nothings’,” he said.
The group and its counterpart, the Ladies’ Ancient Order of Hibernians, host an annual pilgrimage to the Our Lady of Knock Shrine in East Durham, New York.
Today, Knock is the National Marian Shrine of Ireland and hosts the largest pilgrimage in the country. The shrine is surrounded by gardens with five churches.
“Pilgrims often comment on the great sense of peace that they experience here,” Fr. Gibbons said.
The National Novena to Our Lady of Knock takes place Aug. 14-22 every year, bringing guest speakers, workshops for pilgrims, and a candlelight rosary procession around the shrine grounds each evening.
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Pray for this woman to receive the gift of contrition.
Meanwhile – to her goes the coveted (?) award for oxymoron of the week/month/year/decade.
Nancy Pelosi has supported abortion rights for 40-50 years. At that rate, she’s prime matter for a committal reward ceremony (and judgment, God rest her soul).
Nancy Pelosi is out-of-date, on Ireland at least. Time to get with-it, Nancy. Ireland was a Catholic country. Was, past tense.
Hi Gilberta. Abortion is legal in only 8 of its 32 states in Mexico. The majority of the people don’t want abortion legalized, but, the government wants the American dollars to continue flowing into Mexico.
After a list of five influential persons, herself first, down to her significant other, finally god. Priorities matter, but God’s creation of man in his image was not given to brought into this world and subject to a variety of personal priorities to kill it or nurture it.
God we know judges the soul. We judge ourselves to condemnation when we kill the innocent, or endorse the killing of the innocent. Archbishop Cordileone went to great length to touch a hardened heart. What we do to others manifests what we are. If there’s any indication of the Apostle’s warning not to receive the Eucharist unworthily, it’s manifest in the shivering coldness of the Speaker’s disdain for those who love life, her unwillingness to protect them from harm. She prefers to praise drag queens for their creative expression of freedom. This administration, this culture is rapidly becoming [already is?] purveyors of sodomy and death. The two are intimately related.
Nancy Pelosi is everything that is wrong in this world. She is no true Catholic, and she will be judged by the one that matters – God. It will be a rude awakening for her on that day.
It doesn’t matter how Catholic you are, you are still killing a living human being which is a very evil thing to do and a mortal sin if you happen to be a Catholic. But then killing an innocent human being is a crime against nature itself and not simply a Catholic religious belief.. Killing a child, even if she/he is in the womb, is still killing a living human being. It is simply someone who happens to be alive inside of a mother’s womb. Is the logic of it that it is ok to kill a human being as long as he or she is in a mother’s womb? If you cannot actually see this person’s face then, it is ok to kill them? They won’t be missed. There wasn’t a space they filled. It is just easy to get away with doing it to someone who can’t resist you or fight back. It’s actually a sneaky thing to do. The absence of the murder victim will go unnoticed. It isn’t like you will see them one day and not the next because you never actually do see them. The mother and dad could see them through an X-ray but not actually be able to touch the person, hear their cry. It is a pretty impersonal killing of someone you never see, hear, smell or touch. It makes it easy when there is very little or no contact giving any pleasant sensual affirmation.
JimnEm above – not sure about the point of your comment but thanks for the information on Mexico. My comment was on Ireland specifically. Like many, Nancy Pelosi seems to operate under the illusion that Ireland is still a Catholic country.
I am throughly convinced that all the violence in our world is due to the lack of respect with life. Abortion is a disrespect. Those Catholics that disrespect life need our prayers as over the past 100 years our government has politicized morality and culture. Led by human law (lawyers) as politicians, creates victims and grievances that claim to have lost their pursuit of happiness. This trauma in society has created new progressive man made law that usurps God’s law. These schisms happened in the Jewish culture, the Catholic culture, and now the Christian Protestant culture. All of these cultures have been secularized, canceled, disregarded, and marginalized as people gradually have no God, no morales, and no faith. It’s all come down to money and convenience in our throw away culture that includes babies. Only 20% of US youth want children and this is why we have to human traffic 4-5 million migrants to fill the void for cheap labor, sex, and future Americans by policies that our second Catholic President in US history supports along with abortion, socialist collectivism and dividing Christians based on the color of their skin and sexual orientation. Freedom of religion, went to women’s rights, to civil rights, to sexual rights, to ???. Further division leads to further subgroups that have grievances. It will never end as lawyers and politicians need victims to perpetuate their existence. Just as monks, preachers, and priests can’t create God’s law into their box….men with power whether a dictator or elected, can’t create God’s law either unless they believe the Bible, Gospel, Torah, and Koran are living changing documents like the US constitution. They all have tried for hundreds of years and all that has been accomplished are more schisms, divisions, and war.