JUDY VALENTE: They call her Seat of Wisdom, Queen of Peace, Our Mother of Perpetual Help. She is without doubt the most honored woman in western culture. In every age, artists have sought to capture her mysterious appeal. Still today, more women bear her name than any other. Shrines in her honor number in the tens of thousands. She was a teenage peasant girl who likely could neither read nor write, but she was to change the course of history.In the 1960s, the Catholic Church deemphasized Mary, seeking to foster unity with other Christian denominations who felt her position had become too exalted. But Pope John Paul II dedicated his papacy to Mary. And in each succeeding generation, people seemed to rediscover the Virgin, and to connect with her in a deeply personal way.
Ms. MARY BETH DELANEY (Teacher): Oh, he's going to get him!I'm Mary Beth Delaney, and my sons are six, five, and three. When my first son, Paul, was born, he was six weeks premature, and he was very sick. And we spent a lot of time praying at that time. And just as I'd ask you to pray for me, or ask my neighbor to pray for me, or ask a friend at church to pray for me, I can ask Mary to pray for me, too.
Ms. JEAN UNSWORTH (Artist): It -- Mary -- is just very present to me.
VALENTE: Jean Unsworth is a Chicago artist who has created dozens of sculptures of Mary, depicting her most often as an expectant mother.
Ms. UNSWORTH: It's her pregnancy, the concept of Christ growing in her. St. Augustine put it that we as Christians are formed in the womb of Mary.Unidentified Priest: Mary is part of Christian art, of Christian poetry, of Christian prayer.
VALENTE: This library at the University of Dayton contains 95,000 books and pamphlets on the Virgin, as well as the nation's largest collection of Mary in sculptures and prints. Scholars from around the world come here to study her.
Father JOHANN ROTEN (Marian Library): Whenever you study a person like Jesus Christ, you want to know, who was closest to him? And his mother was closest to him.
VALENTE: Yet we don't even know what she looked like. The Bible mentions her less than 30 times.
Ms. DELANEY: It doesn't matter to me, and I don't care. If it comforts me and it helps me have a better relationship with God and with Jesus, then so be it.
VALENTE: The lack of historical data has allowed Mary to assume a variety of roles: strong mother, faithful disciple, protector of the poor and oppressed. Even among Protestants, who long relegated her to the sidelines, Mary is taking on new meaning.Ms. LINDA VOGEL (Protestant Educator): I'm really touched by this fairly modern icon, Mother of the Streets, which depicts Mary as African-American woman and child, someone who represents the poor, the oppressed.
Church Group (In Unison): Pray for us.
Ms. MARCY WECKLER (Music Director): I felt as though I were almost at another level, a prayerful, almost mystical level. I became aware of that just as I was playing, as I was singing. I used to think about Mary as being sort of disembodied, almost not real. She's someone who suffered. She's revered, she -- but she was a person. To me, that's what I relate to; not that she is a remote, disembodied, angelic person. She was a real person.
(Excerpt of Weckler and group performing song)
