page_title: Marian devotions
section_title: Catholicism
hierarchical_section_title: Marian devotions / Catholicism
caption_attribution_description: English: Prayer in the Dawn Gate (Aušros Vartai) chapel Lietuvių: Vilniaus Aušros Vartų Švč. Mergelės Marijos Polski: Modlitwa w kaplicy Ostrobramskiej Italiano: Preghiera nella capella di Ostra Brama (Porta dell'Aurora)
context_page_description: Marian devotions are external pious practices directed to the person of Mary, mother of Jesus, by members of certain Christian traditions. They are performed in Catholicism, High Church Lutheranism, Anglo-Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, but generally rejected in other Christian denominations.
  Such devotional prayers or acts may be accompanied by specific requests for Mary's intercession with God. There is significant diversity of form and structure in Marian devotions practiced by different groups of Christians. Orthodox Marian devotions are well-defined and closely linked to liturgy, while Roman Catholic practices are wide-ranging – they include multi-day prayers such as novenas, the celebration of canonical coronations granted by the Pope, the veneration of icons in Eastern Christianity, and pious acts which do not involve prayers, such as the wearing of scapulars or maintaining a Mary garden.
  Marian devotions are important to the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox, and Anglican traditions, but most Reformed Christians do not accept them, because such devotions are not recorded or promoted in the Bible.
context_section_description: At the popular level, for centuries books such as True Devotion to Mary have built a ground swell of Marian devotions among Catholics, to the point that tens of millions of pilgrims visit Marian shrines every year. The statue of our Our Lady of Zapopan attracts over one million pilgrims on 12 October each year as the statue travels through the streets moving from one cathedral to another.
  Marian devotions can take a unifying national dimension, e.g., devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is a national symbol in Mexico, and in 1979 Pope John Paul II placed Mexico under her protection. Similarly, national devotions to Our Lady of Šiluva resulted in Lithuania being formally consecrated to Mary by Cardinal Sladkevicius and the Chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament, in September 1991.
  Marian devotions are also associated with a number of beliefs among Catholics which have not been dogmatically approved by the Church, but have been asserted by saints and theologians. An example is the belief that devotion to Mary is a sign of predestination. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century, Saint Bonaventure in the 13th century, and Saint Alphonsus Ligouri in the 18th century affirmed this belief, and 20th century theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, who taught Pope John Paul II, supported it with modern theological arguments regarding the "signs of predestination". 
  After a century of growing emphasis on Marian devotions, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), in Sacrosanctum Concilium, #13, sought to give guidance on the place of devotion to Mary in Christian piety:
  Devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them.
caption: Praying before Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, Lithuania
exif: {}