A Heavenly Host In Georgia

By Jill Smolowe

THE BACKUP ALONG GEORGIA HIGHway 138 begins around 7, before the morning chill has lifted. At White Road state troopers guide the tour buses and cars into a cow pasture, toward the PILGRIM PARKING signs. The visitors leave their vehicles, most on foot, some in wheelchairs, and spread out on lawn chairs across the farm, a one-story house surrounded by 30 lightly wooded acres. Many proudly display photographs of the sun -- fuzzy oval images, blazing auras, starlike bursts -- snapped on previous visits. Some read the free literature in a small bookstore, purchase OUR HOLY MOTHER sweatshirts or avail themselves of the portable toilets.

Precisely at noon, the chanting of the Rosary begins. Most days this gathering in Conyers, 20 miles southeast of Atlanta, numbers a few dozen. But if it is the 13th of the month, the count may swell as high as 20,000, as travelers from across the country arrive to see the monthly visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary. "We thought we would come just for the blessings, not necessarily to be healed," says Karen Horne of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has lived with multiple sclerosis for 17 years and been in a wheelchair for the past five. Duquelia Dickerson of Tampa, Florida, is hoping for something more. "The doctors told us three weeks ago that there is nothing they can do," she says, crying quietly and glancing down at the shaved head of her daughter Catherine, 4, who has brain cancer. "I just came to pray to the Lady. She's got a son, so she knows the pain of having a child pass away."

A select group of 50 pilgrims, including Dickerson, is led into the farmhouse where they join Nancy Fowler, 43, a former nurse who first saw the visions of Mary and Jesus five years ago. Together they wait and watch and pray. "She is descending," Fowler whispers. Outside, an announcer informs the crowd, "Our blessed Mother is here." Instantly, the chanting drops to a hush.

An additional 45 minutes pass, then shouts erupt. Necks crane toward a small, bright cloud that has formed in a virtually cloudless sky. Video cameras whir, and Polaroids spit out pictures. People whisper about the experience they have just shared. The announcer declares, "The Virgin Mary will now bless us." Arms extend portraits of Jesus, crucifixes and other % icons for blessing. Then Fowler steps onto the porch to relay Mary's words: "Pray and sacrifice, please."

If enough people believe that on this day in the quiet town of Conyers (pop. 7,380) they received Mary's word, does it matter what anyone else, including the Roman Catholic Church, thinks about what they have seen?

Marian sightings have been recorded for centuries, though largely confined to Europe: Lourdes, France; Fatima, Portugal; Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Today, despite attempts by the Catholic Church to discourage them, reports of visions are on the rise in the U.S. The accounts range from the woman who saw the face of Jesus in a forkful of spaghetti on a billboard in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to the pilgrim who says he was healed during a visit to Medjugorje, built a shrine in his backyard in suburban New Jersey, and now plays host to thousands of visitors hoping to encounter the Virgin on the first Sunday of each month.

Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, a professor of religion at the University of Kansas and author of a 1991 book titled Encountering Mary, finds significance in the choice of messengers. Increasingly, she says, the mediums are middle-aged women torn between the demands of the home and the work front. She finds it ironic that as job opportunities expand, women "are having visions that reinforce their traditional roles." Fowler, who considered herself a "bench- warmer Catholic" before the visions began, says Mary's messages also reinforce the Vatican's ban on abortion. At the Dec. 13 pray-in, she told the crowd that "I pray for the conversion of ((Bill Clinton's)) heart, because I cannot stand with anyone who will stand for any form of abortion."

True believers would rather speak of the miracles they have witnessed: healings, metal rosaries turned to gold, crosses silhouetted in the sun. They faithfully sample water from the farm's "holy well," despite local health warnings that the contents are contaminated with coliform bacteria.

Maurice and Gabriela Gonzalez are so convinced of Fowler's powers that five months ago, they sold their heating and air-conditioning business in California and moved with their three children to Conyers, where they now run a religious-memorabilia shop. "She's not here to entertain us," Gabriela says of the Virgin. "She's here to give us a message." That message, offered by Fowler's apparition, is simply -- or divinely -- this: "America, pick up your rosary. Kneel down and pray."

With reporting by Scott Norvell/Conyers