In fact, for millennia millions of Christians of various denominations, especially Catholics and Orthodox Christians, have nourished a belief in Mary’s special power and inclination to protect those who pledge their filial devotion; even more so when devotion is demonstrated through prayer and patronage of religious sites.

It is no coincidence that Marian apparitions and stories of weeping Madonna statues and icons have been the most numerous and attracted the most intense devotion in troubled times.

Faced with challenges even to the most elementary claims of the Christian faith, to say nothing of the attack on the political and social power of the institutional churches, the cult of the Virgin Mary arguably has been a more effective response than finely constructed points of formal doctrine.