During his recent trip to Cuba, Pope Benedict knelt before a wooden statue of the Virgin which “appeared to two fishermen and an African slave” 400 years ago, as the local media reported on 28 March.

Strange to say, the Virgin Mary always appears to peasants at Fatima, Lourdes, Gozo, and Guadeloupe rather than to the “Vicar” of Christ!

“The Pope referred to the Virgin by her popular name, La Mambisa, in a gesture to the many non-Catholics on the island who nonetheless venerate the statue as an Afro-Cuban deity” – also known by the Cuban populace as “La Cachita”. Here’s an undeniable fact that the cult of Mary is often conflated with the cult of the Mother Goddess!

As a historian wrote: “Through all the transformations of religion, the Mother Goddess has remained. After the Cretan Rhea came Demeter, the Mater Dolorosa of the Greeks; after Demeter, the Virgin Mother of God.”

Long before the Virgin Mary, Ishtar, the Mother Goddess of Babylon, was addressed as “The Virgin”, “The Holy Virgin”, and “The Virgin Mother”.

Cybele, the Great Goddess of Phrygia, was known in ancient Rome as Magna Deum Mater (The Great Mother of God). During her feast in Rome, the image of the Great Mother was carried in triumph through the crowds that hailed her as Nostra Domina (Our Lady).

The Egyptian goddess Isis, venerated as the “Sorrowing Mother” and the “Loving Comforter”, was represented in pictures and statues as holding her divine child Horus in her arms. Statues of black Madonnas, worshipped in certain French cathedrals in the Middle Ages, have proved upon examination to be basalt statues of Isis!

Throughout the Roman world, devout litanies hailed Isis as Regina Coelis (Queen of Heaven), Stella Maris (“Star of the Sea), and Mater Dei (Mother of God). When Christianity came to Egypt, Isis was transformed into Miriam.

Similarly, the Church of Rome, in the fifth century of our era, attached the remnants of the cult of the Greek goddess Artemis to Mary, and transformed the mid-August harvest festival of Artemis into the feast of the Assumption.

Thus, through ever-changing names – from Ishtar and Isis to La Mambisa and La Cachita and Il-Bambina and Id-Duluri – the cult of the Mother Goddess lives on among the credulous, miracle-craving populace.

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S