In 1512, Pauline Fathers built a Marian shrine, now a ruin in the southwest Slovakian town of Vel'ké Lovce but still a place of pilgrimage in the 1700s, when shepherds and pilgrims observed a white dove bathing in a spring in the woods five miles away, outside the village of Pozba. The story circulated that a shepherd's blind daughter regained her sight after washing her eyes with the dove's bathwater. The landowner made fun of this, wondering if the spring could help his blind horse. It did, but he went blind. A sick girl saw the Virgin, wearing a white dress and blue sash, in a pear tree, and was healed. From the wood of the tree a Pietà was carved, still venerated in a chapel by the spring, which hosts an annual pilgrimage on September 15, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Sources: "Studnička," Blog - Jozef Javurek, jozefjavurek.blog.sme.sk/c/114252/Studnicka.html (information and picture) "Studnička v Pozbe," ZITAVA.SK - mozaika zážitkov, www.zitava.sk "Pozba," A búcsújárás honlapja, bucsujaras.hu.)

Where We Walked ~~~ Mary Ann Daly