The Lady in White on the Church Roof at Trà Kiệu

Trà Kiệu is an old place. A Catholic village since about 1628, it stands on the site of Simhapura, the ancient Cham capital, in Duy Xuyên district, Quảng Nam. In 1885 the Văn Thân scholar gentry rose against the French and against the Catholics, whom they called "French of the interior". The provincial citadel fell. The next day, 1 September 1885, the siege began.

The parish priest, Jean Bruyère of the Paris Foreign Missions, known locally as cố Nhơn, led the defence. He had about 370 men in seven teams, with 500 to 600 women and others in reserve. The rebels hauled cannon from the citadel onto the western hill and the old rampart.

The heavy cannonade began on the morning of the 10th. The guns on Kim Sơn hill fired at the church from almost point-blank range. Over those two days, the attackers kept repeating the same words. "It is very extraordinary that this woman always stands on the top of the church. No matter how much we aim at her, we never reach her."

She stood on the ridge of the roof, a beautiful lady dressed in white. Sometimes the besiegers spoke of her with respect. At other times they insulted her. One gunner later admitted that, trying to hit the lady, all his shots, save for one, went too high. That single round struck the small rose window above the altar.

There was a second vision. On two or three occasions, the attackers spoke of legions of children dressed in white or red, advancing like a formidable army. "These children seemed to come from above, descending along the bamboos when the Christians emerged." The pagans proclaimed more than once that they were fighting not just the Christians but thousands of children. A Vietnamese version adds a mahout whose elephant balked as he cried that a small army of children was coming down from the bamboo walls.

Inside the village, the Christians heard every word. They looked. Neither they nor Father Bruyère himself saw anything.

On 21 September 1885 the Christians took the attackers' post on Bửu Châu hill. The siege had lasted 21 days. Fifteen Christians died in battle and 25 more were killed by bullets outside the fighting. The attackers' dead were estimated at more than three hundred.

A few months later Father François-Marie Geffroy came to Trà Kiệu and talked with Bruyère and the survivors. His report ran in Les Missions Catholiques in September 1886. Geffroy would not call it a miracle. "It is not for me to comment on such a profound event."

The vision belongs entirely to the enemy camp. It was overheard by people who could not see it, then written down months later for a devotional readership. Sceptics note that guns firing from a raised position at close range can easily overshoot, and a gunner may have reached for a vision to explain his failure. Later retellings added silver swords, spoken words from Mary and a lone Catholic seer named Chỉnh, none of which appear in the 1886 text. No formal Church ruling has been found.

In 1898 a shrine to Our Lady Help of Christians rose on Bửu Châu hill. On 31 May 1971 Bishop Phêrô Maria Phạm Ngọc Chi made it the Marian Centre of the Diocese of Đà Nẵng. The parish keeps 11 September as the day Our Lady appeared, and pilgrims still come in their tens of thousands. Trà Kiệu is often set beside Our Lady of La Vang. Others compare its rooftop Lady with Zeitoun, and its battlefield vision with the Angels of Mons.