(Hartford, CT) Have you seen the Virgin Mary in this city? Many local people have. Since the beginning of September 1999, the faithful and the curious have flocked to Wawarme Avenue, which begins at Wethersfield Avenue and separates Bulkeley High School from Colt Park.
In the last two years, "Marian apparitions" have taken place in Croatia, Mexico, and California. A 1997 Egypt sighting caused clashes between Muslims and Catholics.
The Hartford site is half way down the street at the park's edge, at a small grove of about a dozen trees on an embankment. At the bottom of the short hill, the largest tree is adorned with poster board messages, flowers, rosary beads and a red bandanna. But exactly where Mary can be seen is part of the mystery. Rather loud and insistent suburbanites claim that they see it in this tree, then that one. One woman could only see it through the lens of her camera. Still others gather around a tree about 30 yards away, closer to the curb, where the letter "H" is carved into the bark. They see something too.
A little further up the street is a shrine, covered with a blue tarpaulin. A statue of the Mary sits near a statue of Christ. Dozens of plants and flowers have been left there, along with about fifty votive candles, the kind printed with saints' pictures that you can find at the local convenience store for $1.99. There has been some landscaping done here because this part of the hill has several terraces carved into the earth so the items don't roll down.
More than one hundred people are visiting today. Mostly Hispanic, but not all. Mostly women, but not all. Lots of children. A few vendors, selling cotton candy, piraguas (snow cones to you gringos), framed pictures of Christ walking on the water and Brett Williams of the New York Yankees. Also green alien dolls. I resist the urge to compare this to a UFO sighting.
The park is busy. There are several soccer games and at least one end-of-the- season baseball game. People come and go; the place is easy to find thanks in part to the map of the site the Hartford Courant published on Friday.
I try not to be too cynical about this event. A few years ago I would have sneered at the rubes who came to catch a glimpse of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary to you non-believers). It also crossed my mind to sell photos of the sighting; double exposed polaroids are easy to fake. But something troubles me about this whole phenomenon.
First, I am reminded of the World's Fair spectacular. In the 1970's, a woman from Bayside, Queens named Veronica Leuken claimed that Mary visited and spoke to her at the former site of the 1963 fair's Vatican Pavilion. Veronica was known as Mary's "voicebox." An entire cult grew up around the apparitions. Mary's message had a very particular political viewpoint. As translated by Veronica, Mary was anti-communist, anti-television, anti-rock music, anti-Mason, and anti-gay. Mary actually crushed a Soviet bear under her feet in one vision. A newspaper with national circulation, called "Michael Fighting," published the transcripts of what Veronica said Mary said. Bus trips from the Hartford area left on a regular basis to visit Veronica and hear her pronouncements. Dozens of photographs have captured visions of Mary, heavenly rosary beads, Michael the Archangel and other miracles. In 1979, a Hartford man took a picture of the statue of Mary at Bayside. When he developed it, St. Francis appeared on the photo as well.
One of the most amazing messages was an ongoing story about how Pope Paul VI had been kidnapped by the Soviets (working under Satan's directions, of course). They replaced him with a duplicate, changed by plastic surgery, who ruled in his place. People believed this. Veronica died a few years ago, but the sightings still occur.
Most troubling was the fact that an East Hartford group known as the Blue Berets formed to bear witness to Mary's Bayside teachings. They were led by Mary Ann Pressamarita, a shrill zealot who attacked all things unholy, especially the growing movement for lesbian and gay civil rights. She and her supporters came to Connecticut's first annual Gay Pride day, held on the Old State House lawn. Mary Ann had her two kids and husband in tow. They wore short sleeve white shirts and dress pants and looked liked they had just gotten out of Catholic school (Dad, too.) Mary Ann's job, apparently, was to provoke those in attendance. She would catch the eye of an angry rally supporter and taunt him. My job (I had volunteered to help lead the security for the rally) was to make sure she didn't get beat up. That, we figured, would be bad publicity for the movement.
Mary Ann was talking trash to one gay man who was more than willing to accommodate her. I stepped in between them. She turned her poison tongue on me. She said (I swear I'm not making this up): "Oh. Are you his angel? You think you're his angel? You can't be an angel. Look what you've got between your legs." Yikes! Sex talk from the saint. I laughed. The situation had been defused. I followed her around for the rest of the event to keep her out of trouble.
The second thing that bothers me about the Hartford sighting is how sure some people are about what they have seen. A lot of the folks come and go on Wawarme Avenue without seeing anything. It seems they do not come just out of curiosity; they are looking for something. I have to believe they are disappointed when they don't find it. I am glad when they don't fake it.
But those who speak loudly and forcefully about their visions-they scare me. They make me think of the Yale experiment in the early 60's where volunteers were told by "doctors" in white coats with clipboards to apply electric shocks to subjects in an adjoining room. Despite the pain they were causing, some volunteers--at the doctor's orders-- kept delivering higher and higher voltage until the screaming stopped in the other room. Of course, it was all a set-up to gauge how impressionable people are when it comes to authority figures.
It's not the gullibility I fear in other people, it's their obedience.
Steve Thornton was an altar boy for six years. Thanks to John Murphy for the title.
