Our Lady of Šiluva

Our Lady of Šiluva is a venerated image of the Virgin Mary in the Hodegetria style, often called Lithuania's greatest religious treasure, held in the Basilica of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Šiluva, Lithuania. Tradition holds that the icon reached Šiluva from Rome in 1457, and in 1608 children reported seeing a weeping woman holding a baby at the site of a ruined church there, an apparition Pope Pius VI later confirmed in 1775 and granted a canonical coronation in 1786. Pope John Paul II raised the shrine to the rank of minor basilica in 1988, and it remains the site of a major annual pilgrimage each 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in a country Pope Pius XI called Terra Mariana, the Land of Mary.