The summer
Ireland went stone mad BY LLOYD GORMAN AND BRIAN CORR
The summer of 1985 was an unusually fine one in Ireland but there was only one thing Irish people were talking about, and it wasn’t the weather. Statues - specifically moving statues - swept across the country like some crazy ‘next big thing’ fad. The whole population - or at least very many of them - were in the grip of an epiphany. If you didn’t actually witness one do a little shimmy or spend hour after hour in a field with a cast of thousands of others peering intently and praying at a Marion shrine or grotto, then you weren’t a player. Funnily enough, priests were thin on the ground at these ‘mass’ gatherings. The Catholic church and its Irish bishops didn’t exactly approve of these events that saw humanity turn up at the normally secluded spots at the faintest hint there might be a mini-moving miracle on the way. Some statues of Mary moved, while other sightings were of divine figures and saints who appeared in stains on church walls. It all happened so quickly that the church’s experts barely had time to study the phenomena. The new kids on the block – so to speak – potentially posed a risk or at least competition to Ireland’s big established Marian shrine and place of pilgrimage, Knock in Co. Mayo. The faithful believe that the Virgin Mary, Jesus, St. Joseph, John the Evangelist, and angels, appeared there in 1879. Knock was one of Europe’s great Catholic shrines, alongside Fatima
and Lourdes, with 1.5 million pilgrims visiting each year. Knock Airport (now known as Ireland West Airport) opened in October 1985 with three Aer Lingus charter flights to Rome. (Knock Airport reopened again on July 1st after closing due to COVID-19). There were more than 30 separate sightings, but one case in particular stands out above the others and made the tiny town of Ballinspittle world famous. Located about five miles outside of Kinsale, County Cork, the country village had little more than a post office, a national school and a GAA pitch. It also has a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary on the side of a hill. On July 22 1985, two women claimed they saw a roadside statue of the Virgin Mary move on its own! Things started to happen very quickly. Many thousands rushed to visit the sites overnight. An estimated 100,000 descended on the sleepy Ballinspittle over a matter of weeks. A circus of TV crews and media from around the world landed at the hot spot, busloads of religious and other groups and curious tourists all flocked to this corner of Cork. Fleets of chipper vans turned up to feed the hungry hordes and the ‘Grotto’ burger was born. The local pub did a roaring trade and enough tea was made to quench a small army’s thirst. Public toilets needed to
THE IRISH SCENE | 14
