Media outlets highlight Our Lady in Antarctica

Rome Reports and the New Zealand Listener ran articles on a chapel and a statue respectively, both under the label of “Our Lady of the Snows”.

On Hut Point near McMurdo Sound stands a statue of the Virgin Mary encased in a welded steel frame.

The statue is a memorial dedicated to Richard T. Williams, who died in 1956 when his Caterpillar D8 bulldozer broke through the sea ice, plunging into the frigid waters of McMurdo Sound. When the memorial was built, a steel cage surrounding the statue was constructed to form the framework of a rock grotto.

But ferocious winds had stripped the protective sanctuary of rocks off the grotto and left the statue of Mary with just the cage. Attempts were made to put the rocks back, but this quickly proved a fruitless exercise in the face of persistent gales.

During the summer of 1995-96, the statue was removed from Hut Point and taken to Christchurch to be restored by local Carmelite nuns.

The statue had initially been set up facing the American McMurdo Station, but on her return to Antarctica it was rotated 180 degrees to face the frozen waters of McMurdo Sound. Whether this was decided at the nuns’ decree or by someone in the construction team who knew the treachery of sea ice is uncertain. Either way, the statue of Mary now faces the normally frozen ocean.

Rome Reports recently published an article noting the southernmost church on earth is Our Lady of the Snows Chapel at Argentina’s Belgrano II Base on the frozen continent.

The chapel came about after base personnel had to melt blocks of ice in order to get drinking water. As they continued digging, they created a type of cave. At some point, someone said, “let’s turn this cave, this space, into a chapel”. And that is how the Our Lady of the Snows Chapel at Belgrano II site came to be.

FULL STORY

Snow lady: A religious shrine takes on new connotations in the irreligious Antarctic (By Matt Vance/New Zealand Listener/New Zealand Herald – subscription required)

Is it possible to be a Catholic in Antarctica? (Rome Reports)