Religion: Vision in Fairmount Park

One day in mid-September, Roseann Pinto, 14, and two parochial school classmates in West Philadelphia came home to their families with an exciting story. The Virgin Mary, the girls said, had appeared to them in a vision while they were sitting on a bench in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. They added that the Virgin was wearing a white gown and a bluish veil, and “vanished’.’ almost instantly. Rumor spread that she had promised to return on the last Sunday in October.

Without help from either official Roman Catholic sources or Philadelphia newspapers, word of the vision got around. Crowds of people began to gather in Fairmount Park, many of them invalids praying for a cure. Rosaries, holy pictures and photographs were left hanging on the bush out of which, the teen-agers said, the Virgin had appeared.

On the last Sunday of October, after the Philadelphia press and radio had made restrained mention of the story, a crowd of 50.000 flowed into Fairmount Park. Only a few claimed to see anything unusual, and most of their stories tended to conflict. Some of the visitors left money offerings ($2,300 so far). Park po lice took charge of the money temporarily, not knowing quite what to do with it. Last week, though diminished, crowds were still drifting into the park. The office of Philadelphia’s Archbishop John F. O’Hara had no comment to make on the reported vision. But Father Nicholas Lazzaro, whose parish adjoins Fairmount Park, ventured an observation. Said he: “If the people want to go there and pray, it is their business. Certainly, it will not get them into any trouble.”