‘Our Lady of the Underpass’: How the Virgin Mary made Chicago lose its mind in 2005
Toast. Naan bread. Honeycombs. Clouds. Tree bark. At the risk of going all Only Connect on your unsuspecting arses, these are all things that people have seen images of Christian figures in. Whether it’s Jesus Christ, an angel or, in this case, the Virgin Mary herself.
I’m not of faith personally, but the very last thing I want to be is one of those smug, Richard Dawkins-fellating jerks that sprang up in the 2000s. The kind that revels in being an arsehole about something that is a very personal source of comfort and guidance to millions of people in the world. Sure, religion has been responsible for countless atrocities, but let’s not act like people haven’t done despicable things in the name of science and politics as well.
However, I can’t help but feel my eyes rolling when people talk of seeing a religious figure baked into the outside world. Sometimes literally. That if you look at this pineapple in just the right way, the face of Saint Peter will appear to you, and thus, we should all repent our sins. Not because religious people are inherently gullible, in fact, quite the opposite, the majority of religious people will tell you the basic psychological fact that our brains are programmed to see patterns where there are none.
What else do you think constellations are other than people looking up at a completely random array of stars in the sky, making stories out of them, and other people buying into them? The same thing happens here on a micro scale, and yet the way people freak out about them makes even the most ardent religious apologist put their head in their hands. After all, just look at the way the great city of Chicago lost its mind in 2005 when the Virgin Mary herself decided to show up there via the medium of a wet patch on a motorway wall.
Wait, the Virgin Mary appeared in a stain?!
According to the Catholic population of the Windy City, she did indeed. In 2005, a few months after the death of Pope John Paul II, a salt stain started developing on the Kennedy Expressway along Fullerton Avenue. Initially, it didn’t gain any attention. Then, a couple of months passed, and a few people started to look at it at just the right angle, in just the right light. The source of the stain looked like clasped hands, the darkened rock under it flows out like a robe – the wall above it has a separate, dark shape above it that looks like a face in profile, bowed in prayer.
Over the course of the year, word spread throughout the city, and it became a pilgrimage site for believers – on the upside, this led to the absolutely spectacular nickname, ‘Our Lady of the Underpass’, but it also resulted in a number of cases of vandalism: people trying to paint over or damage the site. I mean, sure, it’s a stain that looks like the Virgin Mary if you’re told enough times that it looks like the Virgin Mary, but if people are getting joy out of it, then how is that hurting you?
Honestly, Cardinal Francis George, the then-Archbishop of Chicago, had the right idea about it from the start. When asked about the phenomenon, he said to Change of Subject that ‘Our Lady of the Underpass’ was “a purely natural phenomenon” but also that “God has many ways to stir up devotion in people’s hearts,” before finishing up by saying, “If it’s helpful in reminding people of the Virgin Mary’s care for us and love for us, that’s wonderful.”
That’s something that all of us, whether we’re of faith or not, can relate to.