The Marienfried Apparitions: Bärbel Rueß and the Mediatrix of All Graces

May 1944. In the Swabian village of Pfaffenhofen an der Roth, parish priest Martin Humpf and his congregation made a vow. If the parish was spared war damage, they would build a chapel in thanksgiving to the Blessed Mother.

Bärbel Rueß was the daughter of a local sawmill owner. Her mother died in 1938, and that December Bärbel consecrated herself to Mary. She belonged to the Schönstatt youth movement. German sources give her birth date as 15 June 1924.

April 25, 1946. Humpf, his sister Anna Humpf and Bärbel climbed to the forest edge above the village to choose a site for the chapel. Anna fixed a picture of the Schönstatt Madonna to a bird cherry tree. They began clearing nettles. Then Bärbel saw an angel. He called himself "the Angel of the Great Mediatrix of Graces," and told her to kneel. While he prayed, a woman appeared. "The peace of Christ be with you and with all who pray here." The place became Marienfried. Mary's peace.

May 25. Bärbel returned with Anna. The angel pointed to a spot, and there stood the woman, dressed in white. "Dark hair parted in the middle, dark eyes, beautiful radiance in her eyes and face, such clarity, purity and goodness." Her message was long. "I am the Mediatrix of all graces." Bärbel recited it the same day, without hesitation. Humpf took it down in shorthand.

Bärbel spoke of "a blinding vision of most pure light and radiance," with brilliant rays forming a three-tiered crown above the woman's head. When she raised her hand to bless, she became "incredibly brilliant and transparent." Bärbel could not look straight at her. June 25 brought the last apparition. Mary appeared "surrounded with angels, who knelt before her in profound reverence and then worshiped the Holy Trinity." Bärbel's eyes began to ache. Then the figure disappeared.

From February 21, 1947, bleeding wounds appeared on Bärbel's hands, feet and side. They lasted until Pentecost 1950. On Holy Thursday 1948 she said she had been kidnapped and mistreated in a cold cellar. Police concluded it looked as though "the abduction was only staged because Miss R. showed no stigmatization phenomena on Good Friday that year." In 1952 she married the theologian Anton Rehm.

A diocesan commission in 1950 found the messages did not contradict Catholic teaching. Without a miracle, a supernatural origin was not proven. In 1974 Bishop Josef Stimpfle banned any mention of the "apparitions" or "messages" in church communications. A new commission, set up in 1993, reviewed every file since 1946, consulted two outside medical experts and heard Bärbel, Martin Humpf and Anna Humpf. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith approved its findings in 1999.

March 20, 2000. Bishop Viktor Josef Dammertz published the decree. "It is not established that the events of Marienfried of 1946 have a supernatural character." Serious doubts remained. Yet the faithful stayed "free to conduct pilgrimages to the Marian Shrine."

Sceptics note the Fatima themes in the messages, the Schönstatt picture on the tree, and a 1944 meningitis that German sources say left neurological symptoms. The diocese's published statement does not spell out its doubts. Believers point to a long message dictated at once, and to a faithful life of forty years of marriage and five children. The shrine still stands. The Diocese of Augsburg keeps a church, pilgrim houses and the Gnadenkapelle on the hill where a picture once hung on a bird cherry tree.