A white 1986 Acura Legend sits beneath a canopy on the grounds of Rosa Mystica House of Prayer in Edmeston, New York.
Rosaries lie across the dashboard. Prayer cards are tucked into the seats. Medals and other devotional offerings have accumulated where a passenger might once have left a coffee cup or a pair of sunglasses.
For a few moments, an aging automobile becomes a confessional: A priest takes the driver’s seat while the penitent sits beside him in the passenger seat.
The car, it turns out, is part of a larger story that begins not in New York, but in northern Italy.
In 1947, Italian nurse and postulant Pierina Gilli reported a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in Montichiari, Italy. In one, Gilli said Mary appeared with three swords piercing her heart, symbolizing the suffering and spiritual failures among priests and religious. In a later vision, the swords were replaced by three roses — white, red and yellow — representing prayer, sacrifice and penance. She reported another series of apparitions in 1966 in nearby Fontanelle.
In July 2024, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith granted a nihil obstat to the devotion associated with Gilli’s
