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Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu

A Roman Catholic Marian shrine named after Our Lady of the Rosary of Madhu is located in Sri Lanka's Mannar district. This shrine, which has a history spanning more than 400 years, serves as a place of devotion and pilgrimage for Sri Lankan Catholics. The location is well renowned as a center of devotion for both Tamil and Sinhalese Catholics and is regarded as the most sacred Catholic shrine on the island. The church has served as a symbol of harmony amongst people of many religious backgrounds, including Buddhists, Hindus, and Protestants, in addition to Tamils and Sinhalese.

On July 2, 1924, Pope Pius XI gave the picture of Our Lady of Madhu a canonical coronation. Before the start of the Sri Lankan Civil War, attendance at the August event occasionally reached up to a million people. Due to the presence of refugee camps close to the shrine complex and its location in the middle of a combat zone, the Civil War had a significant impact on pilgrimage to this site. It received many shellings.

History

Prior to the 16th century, Christianity in Sri Lanka was not well recognized, despite certain local legends asserting that Saint Thomas the Apostle lived and worked there. The Kingdom of Jaffna, which included the northern peninsula of Sri Lanka, is known to have been converted to Roman Catholicism by Portuguese missionaries from India, particularly under the direction of Saint Francis Xavier. Both the Jaffna king and the Dutch persecuted the newly converted Christians. In this period, the Catholics in Manthai came together to construct a church and erected a figure of Our Lady of Good Health in a shrine.

Twenty Catholic families fled from Mantai to the safer area of Madhu in 1670 as a result of the Dutch invasion and persecution of the Catholic Church. They also took the statue of Mary from that church with them. Around the same time, 700 more Catholics moved into the Wanni woods from the Jaffna peninsula. They erected a new temple and the statue when these two groups came together in Madhu.

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