In late 2018 I was planning a trip to Belgium in March of the coming year to present an essay about Joe at a conference in Bruges. I had been presenting papers about Joe once a year since 2011. Each time I would embark on a trip to Europe to talk about Joe, I researched holy places in the area and did my best visit them. These were little pilgrimages. That is how I learned about the apparitions of the Mother of Jesus at Beauraing, a little village on the French border about 60 miles or so south of Brussels. Hence, I can say that if it were not for Joe, I doubt that I would have paid much attention to the apparitions in this place.

The Catholic Church had approved these apparitions. But I went in search of the evidence that the Mother of Jesus had indeed appeared there. A good deal of controversy can be found in the critical literature on Beauraing, and the evidence, testimonies, descriptions of events in context, narratives are not always easy to accurately identify and assess. There is one public piece of evidence that anyone can find with a few Internet searches, and it is quite astounding. There is a 2009 interview of Gilberte Degeimbre available on YouTube. She was the last surviving visionary at the time of the interview. Ms. Degeimbre’s memoirs were also published in 2017, and she makes an appearance in a French documentary in 2012 at the age of 92.

In the 2009 interview the testimony of Gilberte Degeimbre is direct and spontaneous. At times she appears visibly moved by memories of events that happened more than 75 years ago, and at other times she withdraws and gathers herself in an effort to recollect and experience again, as accurately as she can, what happened to her as a child. It would appear that there are two general ways to view her veracity: either Ms. Degeimbre, in her late 80s and early 90s, musters the skill an accomplished actress to carry on a conspiracy of lies hatched among herself, at the age of 9, and four other children, ages 11, 13, 14 and 15, or she earnestly attempts to recount experiences she had as a child. The former is far-fetched, especially when viewed in the light of her lifelong devotion to Jesus in her memoirs; and these existed as notes written over a long period of time, ultimately published two years after her death, memoirs she viewed as a final remembrance and testimony to send to world, completely divorced from any intention for material or personal gain. The available evidence seems to point to the latter. Earnest recollections of experience are not, of course, unassailable proof that Gilberte in fact saw the mother of Jesus. But for me it is enough to presume her experiences and perceptions are generally real and true. There was something about this interview that captured me. I will come back to this later. The way she says “très bonne” (“very good”) at 23:30.

Here is interview:

The Introduction to Ms. Degeimbre’s memoirs, The Last Doorbell Rung, is also available here: