01 · Overview
The encounter at a glance
On the evening of 15 January 1933, eleven-year-old Mariette Beco looked from her family’s modest house at Banneux and reported seeing a luminous Lady in the garden. When the Lady beckoned, Mariette’s mother would not let her go outside. Three days later, the child returned to pray. In the encounter that followed, she was led along the road to a spring and asked to put her hands into the water.
The next evening, the Lady called herself the Virgin of the Poor. Mariette’s understanding was still very much a child’s: she wondered whether the spring had been reserved for her personally. The answer widened the story beyond the household. The spring was for all nations, to bring relief to the sick. Over eight encounters, ending on 2 March, the Lady asked for a small chapel and much prayer, and identified herself as the Mother of the Saviour, Mother of God.
Bishop Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs recognized the apparitions in 1949. Banneux’s beauty lies in that widening circle: a child at a window is led toward a gift meant for people she will never meet. Poverty is not romanticized, and relief is not a promise that every illness will disappear. Mary’s maternal concern draws the pilgrim toward Christ and toward those who suffer. The question carried home from the spring is simple: how can the consolation I seek become care for someone else?
