Our Lady of La Salette: The Weeping Lady of the Alps

Autumn 1846, in the Alps of Isère, the village of Corps lived by its fields and its cattle. Two children from Corps were hired out as cowherds on the slopes above La Salette-Fallavaux. Mélanie Calvat, 14 and almost 15, worked for the farmer Baptiste Pra. Maximin Giraud, 11, the son of a wheelwright, worked for Pierre Selme. A 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia would describe both as "very ignorant".

Saturday 19 September 1846, about three o'clock in the afternoon. The pasture sat at roughly 1,800 metres. In a small ravine near a dry spring, the children saw a ball of fire, about a metre across. "As though the sun had fallen on that spot." They shaded their eyes as the light swirled and opened.

A woman sat weeping on a stone, her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands. She wore a long dress, an apron and a shawl, with a broad, flat chain along its edge. A crucifix hung on her chest, with a hammer and pincers beneath Christ's arms. Roses circled her head, her shawl and her feet. Mélanie later said her tears fell "like sparks of light" and disappeared.

She stood and said, "Approach, my children, don't be afraid, I'm here to tell you great news." She spoke first in French, then in the patois of Corps. She warned of spoiled wheat and famine. She complained of work on Sundays and of blasphemy. She gave each child a secret the other did not hear.

Then she climbed out of the ravine, tracing a long S. Her feet were said to glide over the grass without bending it. The children followed.

She rose gently into the air and hung there. In an account attributed to Maximin, she stayed between heaven and earth at a height of two metres. Her head and body merged with the light. Only a globe of fire remained, rising into the sky. Then it, too, was gone.

The next evening, Pra, Selme and Jean Moussier wrote down the message as Mélanie told it. That autumn, Bishop Philibert de Bruillard of Grenoble opened an inquiry. In 1851 the children wrote out their secrets, which were carried to Pope Pius IX.

That year the bishop declared the apparition "indubitable and certain". His letter is dated 19 September 1851. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives 16 November 1851. His successor, Bishop Ginoulhiac, made the ruling definitive.

In September 1850, Maximin visited the Curé of Ars, St John Vianney. The priest said the boy told him "that it was not true; that he hadn't seen anything." Maximin blamed a misunderstanding. Two priests, Abbé Deléon and Abbé Cartellier, went further. The Lady, they said, was Constance Saint-Ferréol de Lamerlière, a former nun in costume. A coach driver named Fortin was quoted: "La Salette is a trick of Mademoiselle Lamerlière's." She sued for libel. She lost in 1855, and again on appeal in 1857. Critics also heard echoes of the "Letters of Jesus Christ on Sunday" that circulated in the region.

Mélanie's secret grew with each retelling. Her apocalyptic 1879 version was placed on the Index in 1923, though the 1846 apparition itself remained approved. In 1999, Fr Michel Corteville found the original 1851 texts in the Vatican archives. A basilica now stands on the mountain. La Salette sits in a line of approved apparitions to children, beside Lourdes, Pontmain and Fátima.