MOTHER OF THE WORD (NYRINA WA JAMBO)

Day 200: November 28

Nyrina wa Jambo (Mother of the Word),
Kibeho, Nyaruguru, Southern Province, Rwanda



On November 28, 1981, while Alphonsine Mumureke (16 years old) was helping in the dining room of her convent school, she heard someone call "My daughter." Going out into the corridor she saw a woman in white, who, in the native Kinyarwandan language, identified herself as the Mother of the Word (Nyrina wa Jambo), asked about the student's faith and urged her to join the Legion of Mary.

Alphonsine continued to experience apparitions until December, usually followed by several minutes of unconsciousness, but most of her classmates did not believe her until January 12, 1982, when the Mother of the Word began appearing to another 16-year-old student, Anathalie Mukamazimpaka. At the end there were seven visionaries, including a boy called Pagano aged seven and a 24-year-old Muslim woman, united in prayer by crowds of pilgrims. In an eight-hour ecstasy on August 15, 1982, they saw the bloody future of their land. Mother gave songs and exhortations to believe, to pray and to repent. After an investigation, on August 15, 1988, the bishop approved veneration at the site. Alphonsine continued to see the Mother of the Word until November 28, 1989, when the apparitions to the other visionaries ceased. Alphonsine lost her entire family in the 1991-5 civil war, in which at least two of the other visionaries died. In July 2002, the Vatican verified the apparitions. In 2003, Cardinal Sepe, head of the Vatican's missionary arm, consecrated the shrine of Our Lady of Sorrow at the site.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"Glory to the Blessed Trinity in you, O Mary! Glory to you, O Mary, in the Blessed Trinity! Queen of the missions, Queen of vocations, Queen of Christianity, Queen of all nations, Queen of Divine Revelation, Queen of the arts, Queen of the Church Militant, Suffering and Triumphant."

(Ascension, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1997, p. 408)

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