| Our Lady of Tinos, Greece |
Title: Panagia (All Holy) , Mary of the Annunciation (icon)
Visionary: Michael and Pélagie Polyzoés
On March 1821 and 1822, at the monastery of Kechrovouni, Michael Polyzoés and his little sister Pélagie, saw in a dream on three different occasions, the Virgin dressed with a golden gown and encircled by an intense divine light. She asked them to go digging in a field in a village near the location of his house. Excavations undertaken with the permission of Bishop Gabriel, they reveal the ruins of an ancient church, was erected on the foundations of a new building dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and the Mother of God, Source of Life.
In 1823, workers leveled the ground to lay paving extracted from the earth icon of the Annunciation believed to be miraculous. The old sanctuary was rebuilt and rededicated in 1831.Tinos and become a national shrine in Greece. On August 15, many pilgrims come to venerate the icon of Megalochare (Full of Grace). In 1972 the island of Tinos was declared by the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorites to be a "sacred" place.