An Irish village called Knock

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On one of our visits to Ireland, we were making our way north and came across Knock. Not being very religious, I'd never heard of Knock and thought it quite an unusual name, not that Australia has any right to pick on the names of towns in other countries. So we're driving along country roads and suddenly we're in this village that has dozens of cars and even more people milling around a building that looks like a church or shrine. This is Knock, a village in Co. Mayo. In 1879, three school-children saw a vision of the Virgin Mary, together with St Joseph and John the Evangelist, and Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. Ireland was in the grip of immense cultural, social and economic change when the visitation occurred. This became one of Europe's major shrines. Each year, around one and a half million pilgrims visit the site. In 1979, Pope John Paul II visited Knock to celebrate the centenary of the apparition. In 1963, Monsignor James Horan was appointed parish priest. He oversaw the construction of a basilica at the Shrine. This can accommodate 10,000 people. During his term of office, the Ireland-West airport was established to help cope with tourists and pilgrims. The main street of Knock is very commercialised with umpteen shops with shonky names selling cheap and nasty artefacts. On the site of the shrine, a Visitors' Centre caters for tourists with numerous booklets, books, religious icons and tracts available for purchase. The original wall of the old church had to be fenced off to stop people removing pieces of the wall.