We’ve been carrying a lot of stories about Our Lady of America. We’ll be carrying more in the future. It’s the case of a nun named Sister Mildred Mary Ephrem Neuzil of Ohio who had apparitions pertaining to the United States. One of her major apparitions, as it happens, occurred on August 5, 1957.

This is fascinating because years later, in the 1980s, it would be claimed at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina that the actual date of the Virgin Mary’s birth is August 5 (and not September 8, as tradition has long had it).

Could that be? Is August 5 the Blessed Mother’s actual birthday?

Both dates — today and the one in September — can be considered special. While maintaining the Church’s tradition, and thus looking at September as the official one to celebrate, it’s important to know that August 5 is also the day — in A.D. 352 — that a dramatic manifestation occurred in Rome. That was the day Mary appeared in a dream to a nobleman and his wife, as well as Pope Liberius — telling all three to construct a church at a site she would designate with snow.

Though it was August, and in the Mediterranean climate, snow or frost was indeed reported the next day by those who flocked in amazement around Mount Esquiline, which became the site for the Basilica of Mary Major, now the greatest church in the Blessed Mother’s honor!

So there we have it! A Pope had a revelation himself, and Mary’s appearances go back many, many centuries. This may be news to those who think it’s all a recent figment of the imagination. Indeed, the Virgin’s appearances led to construction of hundreds of other Christian structures in Europe. That’s why she’s known as “Mother of the Church.”

And now she seeks to install herself in the United States. She requests a statue. She wants the U.S. to turn back to purity and to her immaculate Heart (white as snow).

She wants America to spiritually lead the world.

“Though the serenity of her countenance never left her, she spoke with a gravity that made her words all the more solemn,” Sister Mildred once recounted of the August 5 apparition. “She seemed anxious to impress me with some idea of the greatness of this gift of God to us, namely, His Divine Presence within our souls through sanctifying grace.”

[for a complete history of the Virgin’s apparitions since 40 A.D., see ‘The Last Secret’].