The recent moves by the Vatican in sanctioning or rejecting various places of reputed apparitions were fascinating on a number of counts, none more so than approval of the Rosa Mystica devotion.

That was based on apparitions during 1947 and then during 1966 to an Italian woman named Pierini Gilli of Montichiari, and perhaps most interesting is the fact that this series of appearances by the Virgin Mary included messages that mentioned another alleged apparition spot in Italy called Ghiaie di Bonate. To quote Rosa Mystica directly (during an apparition to Gilli on December 7, 1947), “I shall show my heart tomorrow, of which the people know so little. In Fàtima I asked that the devotion to my heart be spread. I wanted to bring my heart into Christian families in Bonate. Here, in Montichiari, I wish to be venerated as the ‘Rosa Mystica‘ as already indicated so often, together with the devotion to my heart which must be specially practiced in religious institutes so that they may obtain more graces through my motherly heart.”

The reason it is electrifying: the apparitions at Ghiaie (gail-yea) di Bonate—near Bergamo, about fifty miles northeast of Milan—have been in limbo for decades: eighty years, to be exact. And yet they reportedly were among the very most powerful ever recorded, in some ways as or more spectacular than even Fàtima.

If the Bonate reports are accurate—and there seems little reason to doubt them—these were apparitions attended on at least two occasions by upwards of 350,000 at a time when there was no television news and of course no internet or social media. (The crowd at Fàtima during the famous October 13, 1917, sun miracle has variously been estimated at between thirty and a hundred thousand.)

And the solar phenomena at Bonate were seen not just by those present but in neighboring towns and villages.

Those phenomena included the solar orb spinning, turning colors, enlarging or shrinking in size, transmogrifying into the shape of the Virgin or a Cross, and radiating a beam of light directly at the young girl who was the sole visionary.

Her name: Adelaide Roncalli (a distant relative of Pope John XXIII). Her story—and the repression of these phenomena—is one of the richest in Marian annals.

The reason for the suppression: despite countless eyewitnesses and a visionary who had been extraordinarily devout from her early years, a philosopher from a nearby seminary named Don Luigi  Cortesi, apparently hostile to mysticism, demanded he be allowed to take Adelaide alone for an interrogation, during which he isolated and threatened the poor girl until she signed a confession stating that the apparitions had actually never occurred—a confession she soon after renounced and one that the Vatican later rejected.

Browbeaten relentlessly and placed in isolation, Adelaide eventually agreed and signed a letter Cortesi dictated to her, saying, “I am a liar I did not see the Holy Virgin and I made up the story myself.” Based on this forced confession, a diocesan court in Bergamo ruled in 1948 that there was no evidence of supernatural intervention at Le Ghiaie and forbade any type of Marian cult.

John XXIII later wrote a letter stating that the confession of Adelaide was invalid from a canonical perspective, and Blessed Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, Archbishop of Milan, sent Father Agostino Gemelli, a physician and psychologist who founded the Catholic University of Milan, to examine Adelaide, concluding that Adelaide was perfectly normal and unable to make up this story.

The damage, done by a single skeptic, sent the incredible apparitions (more spectacular than Rosa Mystica) into limbo, where they have remained until the recent Mystica approval. Thus it is that the Bonate apparitions—again, cited by the Virgin herself at Montichiari, which now has the highest approval allowed by new Vatican norms—are prime for a major reconsideration.

The story goes like this: on May 13, 1944, during World War Two, and on an anniversary of Fàtima, Adelaide was picking flowers to offer them to an image of Our Lady that hung halfway up the stairwell in her home. Her six-year-old sister and some friends were with her when it happened.

“I saw a beautiful elderflower but it was too high up for me to pick. I was admiring it when I saw a golden dot coming down from above and gradually approaching the ground and as it got closer, it became larger and larger and in it I saw the presence of a beautiful Lady with the Baby Jesus in her arms and on her left, Saint Joseph,” she later testified. “The three persons were wrapped in three oval circles of light and remained suspended in space not far from the threads of light. The Lady, beautiful and majestic, wore a white dress and a blue mantle; on her right arm she had the Rosary crown composed of white beads; on her bare feet she had two white roses. The dress around her neck had a finish of pearls all the same tied in gold in the form of a necklace. The circles surrounding the three people were luminous with shades of golden light. At first I was afraid and tried to run away, but the Lady called me with a soft voice, saying: “Don’t run away because I am Our Lady!” So I stopped and looked at her, but with a sense of fear. Our Lady looked at me, then added: ‘You must be good, obedient, respectful of your neighbor, and sincere: Pray well and come back to this place for nine evenings always at this time.’ Our Lady looked at me for a few moments, then slowly moved away, without turning her back on me. I watched until a whitish cloud removed them from my gaze. The Child Jesus and St. Joseph did not speak; they only looked at me with an amiable expression.”

The apparitions occurred for thirteen days in two series: from May 13 to 21 and then May 28 to 31—more public appearances than Fàtima and one less than Lourdes (though the Fatima seers and possibly Saint Bernadette also had private experiences).

During the second appearance at Bonate, the Blessed Mother allegedly said, “You must be good, obedient, sincere, and pray well, respectful towards your neighbor. Between your fourteenth and fifteenth year, you will become a Sacramentine Sister. You will suffer a lot, but don’t cry, because afterwards you will come with me to Heaven!”  The Blessed Mother then slowly walked away and disappeared, as she had the night before.

During the third apparition, when asked to heal sick children, Our Lady told Adelaide, “Tell them that if they want their children healed they must do penance, pray a lot, and avoid certain sins. If the men do penance, the war will end in two months; otherwise, in less than two years.”

Instructive to us also was what the Blessed Mother said at the four apparitions.

“Our Lady smiled at me and then said to me with a sorrowful face: ‘So many mothers have their children in misfortune because of their serious sins; let them stop sinning and the children will be healed,'” said Adelaide. “I asked for an external sign to satisfy the people’s desire. She answered me: ‘That too will come in due time. Pray for the poor sinners who need the children’s prayers.’ So saying, she went away and disappeared.”

It was at the fifth apparition that the Blessed Mother said to Adelaide, “Tell the Bishop and the Pope the secret that I confided to you… I recommend you to do what I tell you, but do not tell anyone else.”

This Adelaide would do, winning a personal visit with both her bishop and the Supreme Pontiff at the time, Pius XII.

The messages were undeniably intriguing. “The prayer I like best is the Hail Mary,” the Virgin told Adelaide. When asked if sick children should be brought there, the Virgin, “with a heavenly voice,” answered: “No, it is not necessary for everyone to come here, those who can come will come and according to their sacrifices they will be healed or will remain sick, but they must not commit any more serious sins.”

“I begged her to perform some miracle so that people would believe her words. She answered me: ‘They will come too, many will be converted and I will be recognized by the Church.’ Then she added seriously: ‘Meditate on these words every day of your life; take courage in all your sufferings. You will see me again at the hour of your death; I will keep you under my mantle and carry you to Heaven.'”

First dozens, then hundreds, then those tens of thousands began attending the apparitions. By the eighth apparition, there were a reported thirty thousand–soon growing exponentially.

In fact, the one immediately following drew 200,000 before swelling toward the end to yet larger throngs. As Cortesi himself recorded, “Somebody noticed a strange beam of light shining upon the child and reflecting over the surrounding faces. Others noticed the sun had a Cross shape. Others saw the solar disc whirl dizzily, forming a ring not larger than half a meter. In the lower layer of the atmosphere, some people saw a rain of golden stars, small yellow clouds in the shapes of hoops–so thick and near that somebody tried to catch them in full flight.

“On the onlookers’ hands and faces the most varied color shaded off with the yellow color prevailing over the others.

“Phosphorescent hands were seen; light globes in the shape of Hosts.”

Another message: “The sick who want to be healed must have more confidence and sanctify their suffering if they want to gain heaven. If they do not do this, they will have no reward and will be severely chastised. I hope that all those who will know my word will make every effort to earn heaven. Those who will suffer without complaint will obtain from me and my Son whatever they ask for. Pray much for those whose souls are sick; my Son Jesus died on the cross to save them. Many do not understand these words of mine and for this I suffer.”

Notes a magazine called The Postil, “All bishops of Bergamo, from the time of the event up to now, are firm believers of Le Ghiaie, though none of them had enough courage to start a revision of the 1948 trial. Nowadays, at Le Ghiaie, there is still the old, small chapel that was built before 1948, surrounded by a little gallery and a lot of trees and greenery. Recently in 2019, the bishop of Bergamo, Francesco Beschi, authorized the cult of Mary, Queen of Families, at the small chapel, where flocks of believers still come to implore the Mother of the Family.”

“At age fifteen, Adelaide [above, in more recent years] entered the Sacramentine cloister as the Virgin had promised her. But after a few years of persistent gossip, and because she was held suspect when not in open hostility by the official Church and the other sisters, Adelaide was forced to quit the habit and returned to a secular life. She became a nurse, married, had children, lived in anonymity in Milan, and died in 2014. She disappeared from public life; and only in the late 1980s did she release a notarized declaration, in which she stated once and for all that she genuinely had had the apparitions of the Holy Virgin, in May 1944.”

[resources: The Final Hour]