THE BLESSED MARY'S LAND

The discoverer of the New World were all Catholics who invoked the help of the Mother of God in their undertaking. 

Christopher Columbus entrusted his venture to the Blessed Virgin Mary. But one may say that Christopher was not the first to discover America. Surely. For 130 years before his arrival, other Europeans had arrived in the New World. 

In 1353, King Erikson of Sweden and Norway sent Paul Knutson to Greenland to check on his subjects there. Not finding them there, Paul sailed further, thus  reaching the Americas, landing in Hudson Bay and settling in South Minnesota. 

In 1898, a farmer in Minnesota unearthed a flatstone with Scandinavian writings of the middle ages. It described a massacre of some of their men and the invocation, "Ave Virgo Maria, save us from evil." Sweden and Norway were still devout Catholics at that time and often invoked the help of Mary, the Virgin Most Powerful. 

America was truly discovered by Catholic Vikings and Catholic Columbus, both ardently devoted to the Mother of God. Columbus named one of his ships the Santa Maria and is said to have sung the Salve Regina upon sighting the New World. 

A few years later, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego and made the New World her own domain. Maryland is named after her. And Los Angeles is not the city of angels but the city of Our Lady of the Angels. The Mississippi river was originally the River of the Immaculate Conception. And in Montana stands Our Lady of the Rockies, the world's tallest statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

In Louisiana, the feast of Our Lady of Prompt Succor commemorates the American Victory over the British invaders in 1815, wherein Andrew Jackson with 6,000 poorly trained American militiamen routed 20,000 well-trained British solders backed by 50 ships with a thousand guns.  Jackson personally thanked the nuns for their prayers. 

When non-Catholic Europeans arrived in the Americas, they exerted great effort to downplay devotion to Mary causing much exodus from the Catholic Church. It is sad to note that the second biggest non-Catholic denomination in the U.S. is made up of twenty million ex-Catholics. 

(08-09-02)