Everyone we have talked to about the Vigil Saturday and Sunday at Cicero and Elston was impressed. The Mass Saturday morning was standing room only. Despite a drizzle and even some downright rain, the beautiful statue of Our Lady of the New Millennium was never unattended, and some people kept the entire vigil.
Three Babies Saved during Vigil
It was a weekend to be remembered. There were at least three saves that we know of and only the Good Lord and Our Lady know how many women contemplating abortion drove on by when they saw the statue and the people praying.
Many people driving by stopped and came over to see the 33-foot stainless steel likeness of Our Lady, and took pictures. We were there when the truck arrived with a police escort, watched the raising of the statue and had a nice visit with Fran Demma whose husband Carl designed the statue and began the program of setting it up at Chicago-area religious institutions, parishes and religious events.
It was a blessing to have this beautiful statue of Mary positioned in front of the abortion mill parking lot. Julie Mc Creevy of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants was in charge of the event.
In Honor Of Mary
By; Bill Dal Cerro
“I was about 6 years old”, explains Carl Demma. " I was a student at All Saints School in Bridgeport. II walked up to the second floor one day y saw this huge statue of the Virgin Mary near a wall. I was just fascinated by it, by the whole idea of the Loving Mother of God.
Then a few years later, I was in a car in downtown, waiting for a couple of priests to come back from making a deposit at a bank. I looked up and saw a large statue on top of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Building.
I thought it was Mary, but the priests told me it was actually Ceres, the Roman Goddess of Wheat. And I said to them, " well, you know what? “Someday I will build a statue of Mary that big and bring it to everyone.” That’s probably when the idea was planted in my head."
Demma’s “idea”, which has finally come to fruition over a 60 year period, is a 33 foot tall, 8,400 pound statue of Mary, sculptured out of gleaming stainless steel. Completed in January 1999 the statue, dubbed Our Lady of the Millennium, was finished just in time to receive a personal blessing from Pope John Paul II during his visit to St. Louis in 1998. After being displayed at St. Jerome’s Parish in Bridgeport, Our Lady was moved, via a flatbed truck, to St. Germaine Catholic Church in Oak Lawn, where her recent stay cause a quite a stir among both media and the local parishioners.
As the man responsible for Our Lady, the fulfillment of a life long dream, paid for out his own pocket, Demma has become something of a celebrity himself. He has profiled in local papers, even being singled out in Richard Roeper’s column in the Chicago Sun Times. Channel 7 and Channel 9 did pieces on the event. More publicity will no doubt follow as Our Lady makes the rounds of various Church parking lots in the Chicago area ( She’s already booked through early 2000).
Demma, however, is quick to shrug off any accolades. "It’s not about me, it really isn’t ", Demma says, gesturing to the statue looming up behind him, “It’s about her.”
It seem appropriate that Demma refers to his creation in personal terms as a living entity. There’s a touch of the proud father about him, a sweet tempered calm. Yet, more distinctly, you sense a genuine sense of awe in what Mary represents, specially in today’s world.
“One of the main things that kept me going over the years was the kids”, says Demma, the first generation son of parents from the Sicilian town of Termini Immerse. “Kids are just so lost today. There are so many pressures and bad things going on. I wanted to show them that there’s a bigger world there, that Marry, the Mother of Jesus does care about them. She’s a mother to everyone. She can comfort you. God’s presence is everywhere.”
Demma’s strongest early memories are being taken to church by his maternal grandmother, Rose LaMantia. “She was a very religious women, and also very kind”, he recalls. "She’d take me to church and point out the stained glass windows, or tell me about the lives of saints. And I remember many of the people praying the rosary, asking God to take care of their families.
“His grandmother lived to be 89” says Demma’s wife, Frances. " She once told us, " I want to die a happy death." And she did, She passed away in her sleep, with a rosary in her hands."
Demma’s idea had been kicking around his head for decades, but it wasn’t until 1984 that It started to become a reality. His late daughter came home one day and told him about a life-sized statue of Mary that was being temporarily displayed at nearby Quigley South Seminary.
“It was being held there before being shipped to California”, he says. “Over 5,000 people came to see it or say a prayer before it left. I said to my daughter, this is what daddy is meant to do.”
Demma contacted a friend, the Reverend Roberto Balducelli, of Wilmington, Delaware, who put him in contact with sculptor Charles Parks. Demma had specific instructions regarding the look of Our Lady. " I wanted her to be different", he says. I told Parks that I didn’t want her to resemble any other statues o portraits of Mary. She had to be totally unique.
Demma and Parks achieved their goal. Our Lady of the Millennium slowly took Shape. First, the clear face; then the long, graceful hands, nearly clasped in prayer; an finally, the dress of ribboned steel, ingenuously fitted together to suggest flowing
robes.* UPDATE**: The statue of Our Lady has visited more than 170 Parishes until October2003.
Indeed, Cardinal Francis George said in the weeks after Catholics flocked to the underpass to pay homage to what they saw as the image of Mary: If it reminds people of the Holy Mother’s care for her people, then that’s “wonderful.”
Since Cardinal George was apparently one of the candidates examined to be prefect of the CDF and says that to the extent that it reminds people of the Holy Mother’s care for her people that it is “wonderful”, let’s not criticize it but rather join with His Eminence in that assessment.
I think that there’s clearly a resemblance and it is a lot clearer when it’s put side by side with the painting as opposed to the statue in the original post. Those who are unfamiliar with the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe may thus miss the resemblance. But of course some will say that it is just a coincidence. As the saying goes which I am paraphrasing: “For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who do not believe, no evidence is sufficient.”
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