Muslims and Christians join for apparitions

Up to 100,000 people are expected to attend a two-day prayer event in Lebanon which will host Marija Pavlovic, the Medjugorje visionary who receives Our Lady’s message for the world each month. 

The prayer meetings will be held at the Forum de Beyrouth in Karantina, Beirut, over the weekend March 10-11, where Marija is expected to receive Our Lady’s apparitions on both days. The visit of Marija was originally scheduled for the following weekend, March 17-18, but this clashed with another event that the visionary had been billed to appear at, the Spring Festival closer to home in Como, Italy.

Marija still receives daily apparitions from Our Lady and the visit to Lebanon is expected to attract huge attendances by both Christians and Muslims in a country where Mary is greatly revered by both faiths.

The visionary’s visit precedes the Feast of the Annunciation two weeks later. The Annunciation, March 25, is jointly celebrated by Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and is a national holiday instituted two years ago by the Lebanese government as a national Christian-Muslim day, something that never occurred before in the history of Christian-Muslim relations in the country.

Sheikh Mohamed Nokkari, one of the principal organisers of the holiday, said he hoped that such a holiday would spread to other parts of the world, and that it was fitting it began in Lebanon, which the late Pope John Paul II had described as “a message of pluralism for the East and the West.”

Sheik Nokkari added, “Mary is the best woman ever on earth and in eternity for she is above all women, a symbol of unity between the two faiths.

The Council of Maronite bishops said “the holiday helps in bringing hearts together.”