Newspaper Article entitled:  Filipinos Flock to Glimpse Apparition of Mary-Published in the Sunday Tennessean on March 7^th, 1993. 

Agoo, Philippines (AP)- Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims wailed, wept and prayed yesterday under a blazing sun as they awaited an appearance by the Virgin Mary. Only a handful claimed they saw an apparition.

          Word of an expected apparition swept the Philippines, Asia’s only predominately Catholic country, after a 12-year-old self-styled seer, Judiel Nieva, claimed to have seen the Virgin on the first Saturday of every month since 1989.

          Nieva’s family owns an image of Mary, which was said to have shed tears of blood last month. Residents of Agoo, which has a population of about 42,000, claim Nieva is a seer and that Communion wafers and wine turn to flesh and blood in his mouth.

          The Roman Catholic hierarchy has reacted cautiously to the claims. Bishop Salvador Lazo of La Union province said he would withhold judgment until a committee completes a study of the boy’s claim.

          Manila newspapers began reporting the “miraculous events” in Agoo last week, and pilgrims began flocking to the town on Friday, at one point creating a 70-mile-long traffic jam.

          Belief in apparitions and supernatural events runs deep in Philippine culture. Church congregations throughout Luzon, the main Philippine island, chartered hundreds of buses for the pilgrimage.

          Government television claimed 1 million people gathered on seven hills outside this farming town 120 miles north of Manila. Police estimated the crowd at 300,000.

          Many of the pilgrims camped out Friday night, and hotels as far as 30 miles away were booked.

          Nieva had predicted an apparition by yesterday afternoon, and anticipation gripped the throngs of believers.

About 1:15 p.m., several people began screaming that they had seen the silhouette of a woman wearing a dark waistband.

          Radio reporter Mon Francisco said he had seen it. “I was not hallucinating,” he said over Manila radio station DZXL.

          Others claimed to see the sun turn color and dance in the sky. Many in the crowd wept and chanted prayers as the hours past.

          “I saw the sun coming out in different colors,” cried a nearly hysterical Ching Dario, who had come from Manila. “It was first coming down, then it went up again.”

          In midafternoon, Nieva appeared on a hillside, flanked by police who pushed aside weeping zealots who tried to touch him. The boy claimed to have seen the Virgin, who asked Catholics to pray for the children of famine-wracked Somalia.

          “The Blessed Virgin was very sad because of what is happening in Somalia,” the boy told the crowd. “Do not be afraid my children. The Rosary is the greatest weapon against Satan.”   

          He said the next apparition would be on Sept. 8 and then “the Blessed Mother will disappear forever.”