Knock, Ireland, Aug 21, 2025 / 13:20 pm

At Ireland’s Knock Shrine, the confessionals are “the engine room,” its rector says, powering this rural Marian apparition site as a place of hope and healing during the jubilee year.

“We have a very, very big outreach here in terms of confessions,” Father Richard Gibbons, who has led the shrine for more than a decade, told CNA on the eve of the 146th anniversary of the only documented apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary together with St. Joseph and St. John.

In a country where Mass attendance has sharply declined in recent decades, Irish Catholic leaders point to Knock as a place of welcome for those who have fallen away from practicing the faith.

“Sometimes people who are in difficulty with their faith feel, ‘I’m not a good enough Catholic to

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