The story of the statue of Our Lady of Beauraing in Talkeetna, Alaska, related to the healing of Bruce, the toddler son of Eric and Andrea Paul, has a strong connection to the apparitions in Beauraing, Belgium.

Beauraing is a small French-speaking town in the heart of the Famenne region of Wallonia, in southeastern Belgium, not far from the French border. The population was about 1,500 at the time of the apparitions in the 1930s. It seems typical of the kind of place the Blessed Mother chooses to appear.

Here, she appeared to five children 33 times. For her first appearance on Nov. 29, 1932, four of the children went to Notre-Dame du Sacré Cœur boarding school, on Nov. 29, 1932, to pick up one of their sisters from her lesson.

 

Our Lady of Beauraing in Alaska

Some 4,554 miles away, a statue honoring Our Lady under that title resides in the tiny town of Talkeetna, Alaska, on the grounds of St. Bernard Church, one of the three churches and two missions that Father Madison Hayes cares for. How the statue of Our Lady came to Alaska is lost in the annals of time, but eventually its history can be traced to the 1980s, when Father Thomas Powers was the pastor.

“The oral tradition is that he found the statue buried in a closet at Our Lady of the Lake parish in Big Lake, collecting dust,” said Father Hayes. “But the slender statue with outstretched arms remained a mystery to local parishioners for 25 years.”

It was then that “new revelations about the statue emerged when former Anchorage Archbishop Francis Hurley brought a visiting friend, Msgr. John Sullivan, from the Diocese of Salt Lake City. Msgr. Sullivan quickly noted that the statue was identical to one at St. Ann Church in Salt Lake City. He told the parishioners about a man, Steve Schaffer, who lived next door to St. Ann’s and had decided to do a study to find out more about the statue.” The study eventually revealed a fascinating history behind the Talkeetna statue.

Father Hayes said the statue of Mary was cast in a foundry in Albert Lea, Minnesota, in 1955. It was one of 49 other aluminum replicas of Our Lady of Beauraing. “During World War II, U.S. soldier George Herter, who would become a wealthy manufacturer of sports equipment, married a Belgian woman. After the war, 70 children, including Herter’s son, were being transported by boat to America when they were stricken with typhus. His mother, who had a piece of the hawthorn tree from Beauraing, placed it under the boy’s pillow.” The Blessed Mother had appeared at the hawthorn tree.

“He was healed. The other children died. In gratitude for his son’s miraculous recovery, Herter made the statues and placed a splinter from Our Lady’s hawthorn tree in each of the replicas. He distributed them around the U.S. from his native town of Waseca, Minnesota.”

Father Hayes continued, “The whereabouts of only seven are known today. Besides the one in Talkeetna and Salt Lake City, five statues wound up in Minnesota, including one in a church and another in a convent. But how it ended up at the Alaskan mission, no one really knows.” No available record identifies what churches and convent the other five are in.

Father Hayes would like to find where the remaining statues are located. He thinks “that this devotion could be encouraged in places that might be unaware of the story behind the statues of Our Lady, as was the case for a long time here in Alaska.”

 

Beauraing’s Blessings

The children to whom Mary appeared were from two families: the Voisins’ Fernande, 15, Gilberte, 13, and Albert, 11; and the Degeimbres’ Andrée, 14, and Gilberte, 9. They were outside the school in the evening. Albert saw Our Lady first and pointed her out: “Look! The Virgin, dressed in white, is walking above the bridge!” It was a railway bridge adjacent to the property, about 160 feet away. The girls did not believe at first but then saw Our Lady, too.

She did not speak to them on this first of her 33 appearances. The same happened the next day. On Dec. 1 she began appearing to them in the school's garden. Then, on Dec. 2, she told them, “Always be good.”

Recently recounting all the details of the apparitions, Canon Joel Rochette of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Beauraing in Belgium described the way Our Lady appeared:

“Mary is dressed in a long white dress, with light blue highlights. Her head is covered with a long white veil that falls on her shoulders. From her head come thin rays of light that form a sort of crown. She usually holds her hands together. She smiles. From Dec. 29, however, children will discover that she wears a rosary on her right arm; then they will see between her arms open in a sign of farewell, her heart all lit up, like a heart of gold. Hence the name that everyone will remember: Our Lady with the Golden Heart.”

On Dec. 21, she identified herself, telling the children, “I am the Immaculate Virgin.”

Two days later, the children asked her, “Why do you come?” Our Lady told them, “That people might come here on pilgrimages.”

The Shrine of Our Lady of Beauraing in Belgium describes how Mary then started appearing — 30 times — in the school’s garden in the hawthorn tree. The children would “fall on their knees, gaze in the same direction, and point to the hawthorn tree.”

Something interesting happened on Dec. 2. The sister in charge locked the gate of the garden. She also released two large dogs in it to keep people out. The children could not even remain on the sidewalk. The dogs were barking. Although the children were outside the gates, the Blessed Mother appeared to them. “At the moment she appeared,” Father Rochette reported, “the furious dogs immediately stopped barking and laid down on the ground without moving. Little Gilberte would say it clearly: ‘They were the first who believed us!’”

This certainly also relates to the story of the dogs’ reactions to the statue in Alaska.

Father Hayes pointed out that on Dec. 29, 1932, “the Virgin Mary revealed to children her heart. It illuminated like a heart of gold surrounded by great rays … the ‘Virgin with the Golden Heart.’ When seen by the children, Mary stood in a hawthorn tree, later considered sacred once the Church officially recognized the apparitions.”

On another day, Mary asked one of the children, “Do you love my Son? Do you love me? Then, sacrifice yourselves for me.” 

Father Hayes explained that “the messages Mary spoke to the children were to encourage them to be good and to pray always. She asked for a chapel to be built for people to come on pilgrimage and pray, and she also promised to convert sinners.” She said, “I will convert sinners. I am the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven.”

During the last apparition, on Jan. 3, 1933, 30,000 people gathered at the school that was dedicated to the Sacred Heart — the Institute of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. 

On Aug. 22, 1946, the bishop of Namur, who was in charge, blessed a statue of Our Lady of Beauraing on what then was the feast of the Immaculate Heart, and the statue was placed under that same hawthorn tree where Our Lady appeared to the children.

Then on July 2, 1949, the apparitions were approved, along with “the miraculous nature of two cures obtained through the intercession of Our Lady of Beauraing,” Father Hayes said. On May 18, 1985, Pope St. John Paul II visited Beauraing, “stopped off at the garden of apparitions called ‘the enclosure of the Virgin of Hawthorn’ to pray, meet the visionaries and celebrate Mass. The shrine constantly draws pilgrims to pray to and petition the ‘Virgin with the Golden Heart.’”

 

Prayer to Our Lady of Beauraing

Our Lady of Beauraing, Immaculate Virgin, carry to Jesus, your Son, all the intentions which we confide to you this day. (Here mention your intentions.)

Mother with the Golden Heart, mirror of the tenderness of the Father, look with love upon the men and women of our time and fill them with the joy of your presence.

You who promised to convert sinners, help us discover the infinite mercy of our God. Awaken in us the grace of conversion so that all our life becomes the reflection of this mercy.

Holy Mother of God, look down upon our miseries, console us in our sorrows, give strength to all those who are suffering.

Queen of Heaven, crowned with light, help us grow in faith, hope and love, and we shall be able to give thanks without end.

You brought Jesus into the world; may we, by prayer, by sharing his word and by the testimony of our life filled with love and joy make him be born in all hearts.

May every instant of our life be a Yes to the question, which you are asking us today: Do you love my son? Do you love me? Then the reign of Jesus will come into the world. Amen.