Catholic Answers Pilgrimage

Here's a recent letter from Karl Keating:

Where the Virgin Mary's house stopped for a rest

Angelic house movers sometimes need a rest too

You probably have heard of the Holy House of Loreto. It’s said to be the house in Nazareth where the Virgin Mary grew up and where the Annunciation occurred. The story is that, to protect it from invading Turks, angels lifted the house in 1291 and flew it toward Italy.

You may know that part. What you probably don’t know is that the angels tired on the way. (Houses are heavy, after all!) They rested—for three years—on a hilltop in Croatia, before carrying the house the rest of the way to Loreto.

Where they rested you now will find the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Trsat. It’s just one of three key pilgrimage sites we’ll visit on this autumn’s “Catholic Croatia” tour.

Since I’m partly of Croatian extraction, on my mother’s side, I’m looking forward to visiting Trsat and the two other pilgrimage sites: the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Snows at Marija Bistrica (Croatia’s top Marian shrine) and the Sanctuary of the Trinity in Ludbreg, where a Eucharistic miracle occurred in 1414, with the wine turning into visible blood.