STRANGE MIRACLE SCENES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19133, 26 September 1925, Page 2 (Supplement)

STRANGE MIRACLE SCENES.

A HUNGARIAN PILGRIMAGE. MANY CURES REPORTED. Emotional religious happenings are reported from a Hungarian Village called Zakatsi, where the wonders of Lourdes and Loreto are declared to have been eclipsed. They began with a farmer named Lodovie Koevoer, who recently went home through a lonely forest, greatly exalted, and told his children that he had seen "Our Lady gowned in wonderful robes of silver and lace, holding brilliant stars in her hands." Next, ho said, he saw the Ecce Homo as in the life. Fifty villagers, led by the farmer and his children, went out into tho forest, and now all assert that they also saw tho Vision. " The King of Heaven appeared in tho shape of a man, and of the height of ten men," thoy say with one accord, according to the published declarations Some of the villagers erected a tabernacle and an altar on the spot, and since then, they declare, they have seen the Holy Joseph and the sainted Anthony of Padua and the Archangel Michael at tho altar. Reports of miracu'ous cures are circulated. Cripples, after prayers, are declared to have thrown away fchoir crutches, shouting and leaping and praising. Quieter peoples, who stay at homo, have been talking of " mass c uggestion acting on a bigoted and oxcitable peasantry." Since many of the villagers, and most of the pilgrims, keep aloof from tho church and worship only at the altar in the forest, the clergy have become perturbed, and are making strenuous efforts to induce the population to come again to church. But the believing peasants declare they will hold their faith to their own altar, oven against 'the bishops and against the Pope, if necessary; "for no Pope has ever seen God, whereas we have." In the meantime, the influx of pilgrims lias mado trade exceedingly brisk in the village and neighbourhood—and a traffic in relics is already beginning.