FOURTEENTH WITNESS TO KNOCK VISION ANALYSED

Fourteenth Witness.

Testimony of Dominick Beirne (senior),

 

 

 

 

I live at Knock; I remember the evening of the 21st of August ; my cousin, Dominick Beirne, came to see us at about eight o'clock, p.m., and called me to see the vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary and other saints at the south gable of the chapel. I went with him. When I reached the south side of the chapel, we saw the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, having her hands uplifted, and her eyes turned up towards heaven, as if in prayer, and she was dressed in a white cloak [Nobody mentions the robes moving in the breeze - the images were immobile].   To her right I saw St. Joseph, and on her left St. John, just as the other persons had told me before I came. I saw an altar there, and figures representing saints and angels traced or carved on the lower part of it. The night was dark and raining, and yet these images, in the dark night  [ORIGINAL: "THE NIGHT WAS DARK AND RAINING VERY HARD AND YET THOSE IMAGES APPEARED AS PLAIN AS THE NOONDAY SUN"  SCEPTICS WOULD ASK WHY IT'S SURPRISING TO DOMINICK THAT THE IMAGES WERE SO BRIGHT DURING THIS DARKNESS AND THE RAIN? ] appeared with bright lights as plain as under the noon-day sun. At the time it was pitch dark and raining heavily, and yet there was not one drop of rain near the images. 

[THIS HIGHLIGHTED PART IS NOT IN THE ORIGINAL AT ALL.  THE FRAUDSTERS WHO REWORKED AND MISREPRESENTED THE TESTIMONY INVENTED A TESTIMONY OF A MIRACLE AT THIS POINT]  There was a mitre on St. John's head, nearly like to that which a bishop wears. I was there only for one quarter of an hour ; at the time I was there, five other persons were in it with me, looking on at the Apparition. All the figures appeared clothed in white ; the whiskers on St. Joseph were an iron gray ; the Blessed Virgin had on a white cloak. The reason I had for calling the third figure St. John is because some saw his statue or his likeness at Lekanvey parish chapel.

[Interesting that the witnesses are considered by the Church to be reliable when they spoke of what they saw at the gable and not reliable when they spoke of this statue at Lekanvey!  Was the Church worried that the statue might have been borrowed from it to fabricate the vision?]