‘There were traffic jams in the village’
The parish priest of the north Kerry village, Very Rev Philip O’Connell, made no mention of the historic date in his homily.
On February 14, 1985, Asdee became the first location in Ireland where locals reported seeing statues move. It sparked a phenomenon which gathered momentum in the following months with literally hundreds of sightings of moving statues up and down the country.
Throughout the summer of ’85, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the shrines and churches all over Ireland where instances of moving statues were reported.
Most of the people who initially reported seeing the statues move in St Mary’s Church in Asdee in 1985 have moved away from their home parish in the intervening years.
Those that remained in the locality and attended Mass in Asdee yesterday chose not to talk about the events of 25 years ago.
Everyone else was happy to recall the heady days that followed the event which attracted thousands of people to the village on the south bank of the Shannon Estuary.
Mother-of-three Denise Lynch recalled how the village was thronged by the curious and the faithful who came to the little village in their thousands.
“I remember that so many candles were being burned in the church that someone had to be beside the candle stand all the time to clear away the candles so that fresh ones could be lit.
“We had tea rooms for the first and only time in the village. It was amazing – there were traffic jams and everything. People came from all over the country to see the statues. When you look back on it, it was really amazing,” she recalled yesterday.
Today, the statue at the centre of events 20 years ago, the Madonna and child, stands to the left-hand side of the altar and not in the porch where it originally stood.
Yet, to this day the people of Asdee believe that those who said they saw the statue move really did see something out of the ordinary 25 years ago.
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