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marian
anniversaries august
Sunday after August 5
Panna Maria Sněžná, Dolní Dvořiště, Český Krumlov, South Bohemia, Czech
Republic
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The story
goes that around 1500, Mary appeared to some shepherds here atop a rock,
which then split. The gap kept growing; it is said that the world will end
when a hay wagon can pass through. In the 1600s, Clarissan nuns built the
church of St. Mary of the Snow over
the Holy Stone. A nearby chapel houses a healing spring. In 1949 Communist
authorities closed the church and repurposed it as a collective farm
granary, then as a military warehouse. Its Baroque fittings were looted, its
stucco decorations used for target practice, its convent ruined and
demolished. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, an international effort by
German, Austrian, and Czech believers restored the church and chapel and
renovated the statue, which had been moved to another church for
safekeeping. The annual pilgrimage on the Sunday after August 5, feast of
Our Lady of the Snows, which resumed in 1991, features mass in Czech and
German, followed by a picnic.
Sources:
Also commemorated this date:
 | Our Lady of Snows, Rachol, South Goa, Goa, India (or 1st Sun.) |
| Madonna della Neve, Carcoforo, Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy |
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