ASIA/INDONESIA

ASIA/INDONESIA – Pilgrimages to Marian sites in Indonesia increase in October

Jakarta (Agenzia Fides) – When we stand in front of the Marian shrine of Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni, in the Indonesian city of Medan, in the north of the island of Sumatra, we notice a building with the characteristics of a Buddhist temple, with Indian and Chinese elements, designed in the Indo-Mughal style. The name Annai Velangkanni comes from the Tamil language and translates to “Mother of Velankanni”, from the famous Marian shrine in Tamil Nadu, India. Father James Barathaputra, SJ, Indian Jesuit, missionary in Indonesia for more than 50 years, who had it built, saw it as a place open to all cultures and traditions. The church, opened in 2005, “wants to proclaim the Good News of Jesus and devotion to Mary. I thought of a place where everyone could feel at home and seek peace, comfort and healing from Mary, our Mother,” explained the Jesuit.
The shrine is one of the most striking Marian sites in Indonesia and is very popular today. Indonesian Catholics have a deep devotion to Our Lady, which is particularly expressed in the two months that the Church devotes to Our Lady, May and October. As Fides has learned, the Marian sites of the 36 Indonesian dioceses are now full of pilgrims, also thanks to the end of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. These days, thousands of Indonesian faithful throughout the archipelago take part in pilgrimages and visits to the nearest churches, shrines and Marian grottos, gathering in fervent prayer. Parishes, communities and Catholic groups encourage pilgrimages to the main centers of spirituality dedicated to the Virgin Mary, dedicating themselves in particular to the prayer of the Rosary.
On the island of Java, the main island of the archipelago, in Yogyakarta, in the diocese of Semarang, is the Marian shrine of Sendangsono, with the Grotto of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes, the oldest in Indonesia , which was consecrated on December 8, 1927. The cave also has historical value as it is the place where the first group of Javanese converted to the Catholic faith and were baptized by the Jesuit missionary, Father Van Lith SJ.
About 35 km south of Semarang, at Kerep Ambarawa, is another shrine with a 30-meter-high statue of Mary, erected in 1954, on the occasion of the Marian Year proclaimed by the Pope to commemorate the anniversary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Today it is visited by thousands of pilgrims and devotees.
Further east, Poh Sarang is a small isolated village on the slopes of Mount Klothok in the Kediri region. Here too, an ancient grotto dedicated to Mary of Lourdes welcomes thousands of pilgrims and believers of other religions. Next to the grotto of Mary is the “little house of the Rosary” and, on the hill, the faithful practice the pious Stations of the Cross.
But in West Java, in the diocese of Bogor, the faithful also come from Jakarta to pray the Rosary at the Marian shrine of the Immaculate Conception at Canadian Hill, in the Banten region, built in 1988 by the Franciscan nuns of Sakabuini. Just as recent is the Marian monument of Sawer Rahmat in Kuningan, in the diocese of Bandung, erected in 1990 by the local agricultural population: it is reached by a path dotted with stations of the cross.
On the island of Flores, the Catholic heart of Indonesia, one could not miss a place of Marian pilgrimage in the diocese of Maumere: in the village of Wuli Wutik, at the top of a hill, stands the 28-meter statue top of “Mary Mother of all Nations”, built by Passionist missionaries, next to a center of spirituality. The village is a hamlet of the city of Nile, which means “light”. The faithful see in Mary “the light that guides and protects the peoples of the earth”.
In the regency of Belu, on the island of Timor, an imposing Marian statue dominates a cove called “Octopus Bay”. From here, you can admire a magnificent sunset over the sea; here, the faithful stop to contemplate the wonders of creation and arrive “ad Jesum per Mariam”, as Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort said, author of the “Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin”, which Catholics Indonesians read and meditate.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides, 13/10/2022)

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