c. 1999 Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ About 3,000 people gathered to see visionary Marija Lunetti on Wednesday in a rural field where she said the Virgin Mary appeared to her three days after nearby residents reported an unexplained flash of light had streaked across the sky.

Caritas of Birmingham, which promotes the visions that started in 1981 with six children in Lunetti’s hometown of Medugorje in the old Yugoslavia, announced to the crowd that the mysterious flash of light was a sign from the Virgin Mary.

“We really felt very strongly, this is Our Lady,” said Joan McDonald, a staff member of Caritas of Birmingham, which invited Lunetti to Alabama.

The Caritas staff, which prays in the vision field every day at 5 a.m., prayed at 3 a.m. Sunday because they had stayed up late preparing for Lunetti’s visit and wanted to pray and then get some sleep. At 4 a.m., some of the staff saw what McDonald described as a comet lighting up the sky for about five seconds, followed by a loud boom.

“We prayed that Our Lady would be our light, that there would be no darkness,” McDonald said.

Terry Colafrancesco, who founded Caritas in 1986 to promote the Medugorje visions, said the Caritas staff was not alone in interpreting it as a divine sign.

“We got calls from all over the country,” Colafrancesco said. “A couple from California said it best. They heard the news there was a flash of light in Shelby County and they said it must be Our Lady.”

Lunetti, answering a question in halting English, was not ready to say the meteor or flash of light was the Virgin Mary.

“Terry told me about it,” Lunetti said. “If it’s Our Lady, it’s Our Lady. If not, then not. Everyone has their own explanation.”

Scientists said this week that the flash of light was a meteor.

Lunetti, whose hometown is now in Bosnia-Herzegovina, arrived in Birmingham on Tuesday and prayed the rosary with pilgrims from all over the country Wednesday. At 10:43 a.m., she stopped praying in Croatian and had a vision that lasted about 80 seconds. She knelt on the ground in front of a pile of stones and a concrete statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue marked the spot where she had a vision on Thanksgiving Day in 1988, when she first visited Birmingham to donate a kidney for her brother, Andrija Pavlovic, at a Birmingham hospital.

During the apparitions, Lunetti whispers questions in Croatian and the Virgin Mary speaks to her in Croatian, said Cyril Auboyneau, who translated for Lunetti’s 1988 visit and came from Paris to be at the field Wednesday.

Then Lunetti stood and began telling translator Kathleen Martin the message in Croatian. The translator asked her to give her the message in Italian instead, and Lunetti gave the message in that language:

“When Our Lady appeared, she came all dressed in gold. I recommended each of you and every intention of your hearts. Our Lady extended her hands over all of us and prayed over us for a long time. I asked Our Lady to bless each and every one of us and to bless all the religious objects that you brought. Our Lady then smiled at all of us and prayed a moment and then she raised her arm and blessed us with the sign of the cross. I then asked Our Lady if she had something that she wanted to tell us. Our Lady then looked at me and smiled and said: `Do not forget that I am your mother and that I love you.’ Our Lady then raised her hand again and blessed us and then left.”

Lunetti then added some comments about the Virgin Mary’s daily appearances to her.

“She comes as the queen of peace and asks us to pray for peace,” Lunetti said through Martin. “Real true peace is a gift of God and it comes only through prayer. She asks us to pray for families.”

Lunetti also offered a description of how the Virgin Mary appears.

She said the Virgin Mary is about 5 feet 6 or 5 feet 7 tall in the apparitions. “When she comes, she comes down upon a cloud,” Lunetti said. “When she comes down, she wears a crown.”

The Virgin Mary normally appears to her wearing a gray gown and long white veil, but because Wednesday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, her dress was golden, festive and ornamental, Lunetti said through Martin.

Pilgrims came from all over the United States to see Lunetti and hear her message. After she finished speaking, Lunetti handed small medals to people in the crowd. But most important was her message of peace, pilgrims said.

“It’s what we needed,” said Virgie Lanclos of Eunice, La., who said her name is short for Virgin Mary. “We all have such a busy life and it is so peaceful here.”

Philip Zeiter of Grass Valley, Calif., carried a statue of the Virgin Mary he bought in the Caritas gift shop. He and his wife and two small children had visited Caritas in June and stayed a week. “We were so moved, we went the next week to Medugorje,” Zeiter said.

“There just seemed to be so much faith here,” said his wife, Alicia.

Felicity Weber, 24, a retail manager in Austin, Texas, said she is not a Catholic, just a spiritual seeker.

“I felt the calling of the Holy Spirit,” she said. “I’m definitely a believer.”

PH GARRISON RNS