Evenor Pineda and the Late Mother’s Day Gift

Like many single mothers of prodigal sons, Evenor Pineda’s Mom struggled against formidable forces — the streets, the gangs, jail, then prison — but never gave up.

May 15, 2024 Fr Gordon MacRae

Toya Graham is not exactly a household name, but odds are you’ve seen her. Just about every cable and network news outlet in America carried a video clip of Mrs. Graham chasing her masked and hooded teenage son down a Baltimore street back in 2015. She searched for him, and found him in the middle of an urban protest surrounded by police in riot gear. Not long after she left with her prodigal son in tow, the crowd erupted into a rampaging mob that laid waste to one of the poorest neighborhoods of Baltimore.

As the news footage of a desperate mother chasing down her son went viral, Toya Graham quickly became a national icon of sorts, a single mother struggling to raise her son alone against the lure of the streets. My heart went out to this woman. The very scene she unwittingly brought to national attention was one I described in a post entitled, “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.” Seven years after it was published, it was cited by the National Catholic Register as being among the best of Catholic blogs because it struck a very exposed nerve in our culture.

I hope you will read it and share it in these weeks between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in America. That article has been the most widely read and shared post at Beyond These Stone Walls, having been republished in hundreds of venues and shared over 30,000 times on Facebook alone. It told a story that might be the real catalyst behind the looting, raging mobs that overtake inner city streets across America. It is a story about much more than race.

Toya Graham became an icon of the one thing necessary to keep a peaceful and legitimate protest from descending into a lawless mob: a loving, caring, responsible and available parent — preferably two of them in faithful partnership — willing to meet head-on the challenge of parenting. In the now epidemic absence of fathers in neighborhoods like that one in Baltimore — and in prisons all over America — Toya Graham met that challenge heroically, and alone.

A few days later, Mrs. Graham and her son, Michael Singleton, appeared on one of the morning network news shows. He presented as a remarkably articulate and respectful son, traits that no doubt spoke more of his Mom than himself, and he joked that running toward the police in riot gear on that street that day made more sense to him after seeing the look on his mother’s face.

For her part, Mrs. Graham apologized to the nation for a few foul words delivered before cameras in the heat of the moment, but she apologized to no one for the almost comical smack she delivered to the son who towered over her. “As long as I have breath in my body,” she said, “my son will not be down there doing that!” If this blog had a Mother-of-the-Year award, it would have gone to Toya Graham.

But she would have to share it with Rosa Levesque. Rosa is the mother of another young man I know, Evenor Pineda, and I have come to admire her very greatly even though we have never actually met. You have previously met Evenor Pineda however. He appears in a photograph that you will see again below.

Evenor's is a remarkable story of the undying love and urgent hope of a single mother struggling to redeem her prodigal son. It is best to tell it in Evenor’s own words:

Here Is Evenor Pineda:

“I was born on Wednesday, December 30, 1981 to immigrant parents in Nashua, New Hampshire. My father, Cosme, was a political refugee who fought on the losing side of a civil war in Nicaragua. My mother, Rosa, was an orphan adopted into an oppressive and abusive family that emmigrated to the United States. My sister, Lina, was born two years and a day after me, and by her second birthday our mother left our father, fleeing in an attempt to protect us from the drug dealing and growing addiction that was consuming his life and our family.

“As I grew into adolescence with the wonderful woman struggling to raise us alone, I betrayed her faith, hope, and trust by becoming the next male role model in our family to become an abuser and addict, and I added a new twist — a gang member.

“While my mother struggled to pay the bills I did everything to undermine her. Our home became a hangout for the gang. I brought alcohol and drugs into our home and police to our door, because there was no one there to stop me. Under my influence, even my younger sister began to stray into my world, but our mother took a much harder line with her, pulling her back from the brink upon which I lived.

“It wasn’t that my mother didn’t take that same hard line with me. She did. But she also knew that outside our home were the streets always luring her rebellious son from beyond her influence. She knew that she risked losing me forever, so my Mom did what she always did. She struggled as best she could.

“Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen I would drop out of school, be arrested a dozen times, incarcerated four times in both juvenile detention and then county jails, but my mother never gave up on me. Not even when I gave up on myself.

“On my eighteenth birthday, I maxed out of a county jail and was able to land a real job. I held it for five years, but the ties to my gang grew stronger and I simply became better at evading arrest. And my Mom still struggled against them.

“By the time I was twenty-two, I had two beautiful children of my own, my son, Tito and my daughter, Nati. Fatherhood was something I had to learn from scratch, having had no personal experience of it in my life. The relationship I was in with their mother collapsed, but my mother was, as always, right there to help me raise my children. She was an incredible grandmother.

“I was balancing two different lives, however, one as a young father and family man and the other as a gangster. Those two lives collided on April 17, 2005. My friend Kaleek and I had a falling out over drugs that escalated. We both fell victim to the street culture we had embraced, and that would not release us from its grip. It ultimately took Kaleek’s life, and my freedom.

“This marked the lowest point in my life. It was the point at which I learned who my true friends were — and were not — and it reinforced how much the adage is true — that blood is thicker than water. It was a selfish moment in my life where I thought of no one but myself. I knew I suffered, but I had no idea how much I made my family suffer. By this time, my sister, Lina was serving in Iraq, and at a time when I should have been a support to my family, I instead went to prison. I had been in this place for ten years, with eight more left to serve.

“My mother had become both grandmother and mother to my children, and the one mainstay of my life who never stopped struggling to save me. So when there came a time when I had to decide who I am, I looked to the one person who might know. My mother taught me by the sheer force of example the meaning of love and sacrifice, the meaning of parenthood.

“In 2010, I became a volunteer facilitator for the prison’s Alternatives to Violence Program. I trained for this alongside two men you know: Michael Ciresi and Pornchai Moontri. In 2012, Pornchai Moontri and I graduated together from Granite State High School, an accredited school in the Corrections Special School District. My friend, Alberto Ramos.

“One day, my friend, Gordon MacRae showed me an article he wrote about our graduation. It told my friend, Alberto’s story and was titled, “Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being.” It was then that I realized that I must never give up on myself. I know you have seen the photograph of us that I am told is now rather famous. That is Pornchai in the middle with Alberto just behind and to his right.

“I am on the left, and clearly in the very best of company. Gordon is not in the picture, but stood next to the photographer. We were all proudly showing him our diplomas.

“In the ensuing years I served with my friend Gordon on the Resident Communications Committee (RCC), a representative group of ten prisoners that met monthly with prison administration to keep open channels of communication and to try to make this a better and safer environment. After a year I was appointed co-chairman of the RCC having been nominated for that post by Gordon. I want to thank him. At least, I think I do!

“I also was a member of Hobby Craft and its woodworking department where I have learned the skill to produce furniture and other items that were then sold to the public. I used the funds I earned to help my mother and my children, and also to further my education. Through this effort, I was able to afford one or two courses per semester at New England College which had a presence in this prison.

“I formally renounced my gang membership. There was no longer any room for that past in my present. I remember something my friend, Pornchai Moontri wrote in an article I read. ‘One day I woke up with a future when up to then all I ever had was a past.’ Sometimes the truth just smacks you in the head. Today, I find reason to be proud, not only of my mother, but my sister, Staff Sergeant Lina Pineda of the New Hampshire National Guard, and of my children. I am their future, and it is an awesome responsibility from which I must not shrink.

“When we graduated from high school in 2012, Gordon MacRae was there to hear Pornchai’s great graduation speech. He wrote about this in an article I read. I gave a speech that day, too. My mother, Rosa, was there, and I wrote it for her. Gordon later asked me for a copy, and then asked me to let him reproduce it here.”

Evenor Pineda’s Commencement Speech:

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to have an opportunity to receive an education or to have parents to encourage their education. I, however, was one of those fortunate enough to have both an opportunity and someone who cared enough to show interest in my education.

“Yet I then took for granted what I now recognize was then a luxury and I squandered a wonderful opportunity to seize a controlling stake in my future. It was a future which up until high school was very promising. All I had to do was stay the course.

“It was a far cry from other children in the world not as fortunate as I was to have a parent who cared and who valued education, children whose future is bleak, at best. The most shameful part about this is that I knew how good I had it and how bad others did.

“I know of such a woman whose childhood was the polar opposite of mine. She was parentless at the age of three, placed in an orphanage with her six sisters all of whom were eventually placed with different families. At nine she found herself in a home where she was denied an education, robbed further of her childhood, forced into a life of servitude: cooking, cleaning, caring for that family’s biological children, and abused both physically and mentally. She was told that she would amount to nothing, would be nothing.

“Yet this woman did not allow circumstance to dictate her future, and as fate would have it, when the family she was living with emmigrated to the United States, the Land of Opportunity, she did just that. She seized an opportunity and a controlling stake in her future. At the age of just seventeen in a foreign land, she struck out on her own, started her own family, learned English, and with only a third grade education, earned her GED.

“Then she earned a college certificate in her field of work, earned her citizenship, earned a home, and earned the American dream. It was a dream this woman, my Mother, struggled to obtain, and I was a product of that American dream. I was born into an opportunity not afforded to my mother, yet she — unlike me — capitalized on her opportunities.

“I had to endure great loss and suffering to finally grasp and understand to what lengths my mother had to struggle and sacrifice to solidify her place in this country, and how much it must have pained her to see me throw away the opportunities bestowed upon me.

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to have an opportunity at an education, let alone a second chance. This is why this diploma has taken on a whole new meaning. It is a step toward redeeming myself to my mother and my family. It is a symbol of my commitment to follow in the steps of my mother in pursuing the American Dream.

“I’m sorry to be late this Mother’s Day, Mom, and all the Mother’s Days past. I love you, and I thank you. I am so very proud of you. Your struggle has not been in vain.”

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Editor’s Note: Evenor emerged from prison in 2017 and has never returned. He is today the Intervention Programming Coordinator for the Manchester Police Athletic League where he diverts many young people from the lure of the streets. He has also assisted other inmates emerging from prison by challenging them to employ the tools needed to move forward. He is today an outstanding father thanks to the support of an outstanding mother.

Thank you for reading and sharing Evenor’s profoundly moving story. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men

Why You Must Never Give Up Hope for Another Human Being

Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom

For Darryll Bifano, the Currency of Debt Is Mercy

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Acquittal of O.J. Simpson and the Conviction of Father MacRae

The trial of O.J. Simpson and the trial of Fr Gordon MacRae were parallel dramas playing out on opposite sides of the U.S. in the 1990s and with opposite results.

April 17, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The above image depicts O.J. Simpson at the time of his arrest in 1994 and Father Gordon MacRae in 1983 at the time his accusations are alleged to have taken place.

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On the night of May 5, 1993, I entered into a nightmare from which I have not yet awakened. I had dinner that evening at a small Rio Rancho, New Mexico diner with two friends with whom I also shared a home and office, Father Michael Mack and Father Clyde Landry. I wrote of them once, and of the chasm of loss brought about by their sudden absence from my imprisoned life, in “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”

Minutes after arriving at home on that evening in 1993, the doorbell rang. I opened it to see two Rio Rancho police officers standing there. “We’re looking for a Gordon J. MacRae,” one said. “I am he,” I replied. “Please turn and face the wall,” said one of the officers as he placed me in handcuffs to escort me to his cruiser.

That scene, and the ones to follow that night, have replayed in my mind a thousand times since then. I was driven to the Rio Rancho Police Headquarters where Detective Arlan Norby showed me a warrant for my arrest issued weeks earlier 2,000 miles away in Keene, New Hampshire. The warrant described that I stand accused of numerous charges of sexual assault upon two adolescent males alleged to have occurred a dozen years earlier. It listed their identities only as “T.G.” and “J.G.” and I had no idea who they were.

It did not take long for the true nature of the case to surface. Detective Arlan Norby told me that he had numerous telephone conversations with Keene, NH, Detective James F. McLaughlin who was investigating these claims, and added, “This is all because your church has not been handling these cases very well.” From that moment on, I knew this would not be a simple case of truth and justice, and I was right. I was not to be the one on trial.

Within three days, I was released from custody on a personal recognizance bond ordered by a New Mexico judge, and the long, slow process of obtaining information on the case against me began. It was weeks before I learned the identities of “T.G.” and “J.G.” and when I did, I had not thought it possible. I remembered Thomas Grover and his brother, Jonathan, two Native American young men who, years earlier, had been adopted in the Keene area by Patricia and Elmer Grover who divorced after adopting eight multi-racial children. Theirs was not an easy life, but it seemed they found an easy repository for their life’s woes — that and a road to easy money.

Thomas Grover, then age 27, had a criminal record of his own for fraud, forgery, theft, and drug charges, and had pending domestic violence and assault charges. His brother, Jonathan Grover, then age 25, had been discharged from the U.S. Navy after a drunk driving arrest. Jonathan Grover had by then also accused another priest. I could not fathom then how or why these brothers would concoct such a scheme, but the rest of this story — at least, the parts we know, for there are still mysteries yet to be uncovered here — has since been published by various writers including Dorothy Rabinowitz whose summation you may read for yourself as it unfolded in “The Wall Street Journal on the Case of Fr Gordon MacRae.”

It took a full 18 months, and the refusal of numerous lenient plea deal offers, before the case was scheduled for trial. At one point, in a highly unusual development, the prosecution requested a six-month delay because the principal accuser, Thomas Grover, had become uncooperative. It was later learned that he rebelled because he was told that I refused a one-year plea deal. He had apparently been assured that there would be no trial and he could just move on to the money.

It was an irony that I had not fully considered at the time, but I had been living in New Mexico for the previous five years because I was working in ministry as Director of Admissions for the Servants of the Paraclete center for priests. Over the previous two years, the center had become notorious in both local and national news media — including “60 Minutes” which did a shameless, one-sided “gotcha” segment over the treatment of Father James Porter some twenty-five years previously, a case that was ever in the background of my trial.

Thomas and Jonathan Grover’s older brother, David, was actually the first to accuse me. A police report documented that he heard on his truck radio about eighty blanket settlements in the notorious “Father Porter” case by the Diocese of Fall River in neighboring Massachusetts in 1993. He had to pull over, he later claimed, as a flood of repressed memories of abuse suddenly emerged.

David Grover was the first to attempt the scam, claiming that he was molested by me at my parish at age twelve. It somehow became known that I was never there until two weeks before he turned 18 and joined the U.S. Army. So the process of charging me with even a semblance of possibility fell to his two younger brothers. Blatant lies are no obstacle to settlement, however. My diocese still settled with David Grover for $185,000.

This pattern has not changed since then. Even as I write this post, I have learned that my diocese, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, provided a six-figure settlement last month, when a newly emerged accusation against a long deceased priest claimed that he molested a teenager more than 50 years earlier in 1972:

“No lawsuit was filed because the alleged abuse happened outside the statute of limitations, but the attorney representing the John Doe who was involved said it’s important for survivors to come forward as part of the healing process.”

“In a statement, the Diocese of Manchester said, in part: ‘The Diocese of Manchester provides financial assistance to those who have been harmed, regardless of when the abuse occurred, through a process utilizing independent trauma-informed consultants.’”

— WMUR News, March 26, 2024

The White Bronco

I had to take a leave from my ministry with the Servants of the Paraclete center as I awaited trial, but the superiors of the Order in New Mexico asked me to remain with them throughout my ordeal. It was a courageous gesture of mercy and support for which I have only gratitude, even after all these years.

It was while living with that community that I walked into our common room a few weeks later on June 17, 1994, to see the now famous televised spectacle of a white Ford Bronco being pursued at low speed on a Los Angeles freeway by a dozen police vehicles and TV news helicopters. Ever since then, the case of O.J. Simpson seems in my memory to be the backdrop against which my own nightmare played out.

My trial, from jury selection to conviction, was over in less than two weeks because there was zero evidence for a jury to review. I was pronounced guilty in less than two hours of jury deliberation, and then sent to prison with a 67-year sentence on September 23, 1994. Most of the local news media pounced on the “priest in prison” story while ignoring the fact that I had three times been offered a sentence of one year in prison if I would plead guilty.

The O.J. Simpson trial, by contrast, stretched on for nine months, dominating the background of my entire first year in prison. It was all other prisoners ever talked about. Because the trial was televised, it seemed the only thing every prisoner watched. I did not have a television then, but I was crammed into a cell with seven other men, and had a daily dose of the O.J. Trial whether I wanted it or not.

Still from KCLA News Los Angeles video

“If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit.”

Thanks to television, the entire nation had a front row seat to the rare drama of “The O.J. Trial.” The spectacle included the opening statements of L.A. prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden on January 24, 1995; the theatrical opening statement of defense attorney Johnny Cochran the next day, and some famous names among lawyers as F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, and Robert Shapiro joined him in O.J.’s million dollar Dream Team defense.

In the year-long spectacle, we heard L.A. Detective Mark Fuhrman grilled by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey for his suspected history of racist remarks only to later assert his Fifth Amendment right to refuse questions after tapes were played in open court. Then Attorney Robert Shapiro cross-examined Detective Vanatter about statements he allegedly made to mob informants that shed light on why the L.A. police went to the home of O.J. Simpson in the early days of the case.

We witnessed the heavily hyped scene of O.J. trying on the gloves obtained as prosecutorial evidence resulting in Johnny Cochran’s most famous sound bite to emerge from this trial “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” And we saw all of this entirely eclipse a mountain of physical and scientific forensic evidence against O.J. Simpson, including DNA evidence. But none of it mattered. None of it could defeat the theatrics.

In his closing argument before the jury, O.J. defense attorney, Johnny Cochran compared Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler. In his closing argument in my trial just a few months earlier, prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds compared me to Adolf Hitler. However, my attorney had already left the trial and was not there to object.

On October 2, 1995, after a trial that presented mountainous evidence over the course of nine months, the O.J. Trial jury reached a verdict in just three hours. It was one of the most watched moments in American television history. From my prison cell, having served a year in prison with just sixty-six left to go for crimes that never took place and for which there was no evidence at all, I heard the O.J. verdict: “not guilty” on both counts of murder.

Book cover by Graymalkin Media. Photo by AFP

Now Comes Marcia Clark

Three years after the O.J. Trial ended, with me still in prison, I received a letter from the studios of Mark Phillips Films and Television in Los Angeles. Here’s the entire letter dated January 15, 1998:

“Dear Father MacRae: I work for former Los Angeles prosecutor Marcia Clark. She is doing a primetime special for FOX Broadcasting Network which will air at 9:00 PM on Monday, February 16, 1998. Through the National Justice Committee I heard about your story. I talked with Mark Phillips, the Executive Producer of the show, about your case. He in turn talked with the executives at FOX about profiling your story on our special, and they want to feature your story on our show.

“Basically what we are doing in this one-hour, one-on-one interview show with Marcia Clark is to send her wherever the story is. She would do a sit-down interview with you. The interview would end with you taking a polygraph test. I understand you have taken several polygraphs in this case, and have passed them.

“We want to profile your story in a more positive light. It is obvious to us that an injustice has occurred in your case, and through profiling your story we want to get the word out that justice has not been served, and that there is an innocent man sitting in prison who should be free. By getting your story out, people will think twice about blindly accepting charges brought by one person against another person in your situation.”

— Letter of January 15, 1998 from Mark Phillips Films & Television

I accepted Marcia Clark’s invitation immediately, though I added that my accusers should also cooperate with polygraph (lie detector) tests. This had been proposed a number of times, but none of my accusers or their attorneys would even acknowledge similar invitations to take a polygraph or respond to questions. When a former FBI agent investigating the case found and approached accuser Thomas Grover at the Hualapai Tribal Reservation in Arizona where he is hiding, all he would say is “I want a lawyer.” Where I live, pretty much everyone knows what “I want a lawyer” means.

But to make a long story shorter, the 1998 Marcia Clark program was a dead end. New Hampshire officials blocked the plan and would not allow FOX to conduct an on-camera interview, nor would they allow the polygraph expert to test me. Fox executives sent an appeal to then Governor Jeanne Shaheen (now U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH) who responded in a letter dated January 31, 1998:

“I understand your company’s interest in an on-camera interview with Gordon J MacRae, who is currently an inmate in the New Hampshire State Prison, however I will not interfere with the decision not to allow media access to Mr. MacRae.”

So the Constitution, the First Amendment, and Freedom of the Press all took a back seat to some hidden agenda. The interest of Marcia Clark, however, is the real reason I am writing of this today. Perhaps the overture would have been different after the fall of the priesthood in the revelations of 2002 and 2003 which managed to squash all other media courage — except that of Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal — in seeing both sides of this story.

In the trial of O.J. Simpson, Marcia Clark saw justice fail in a very big way as a prosecutor trying to bring justice to two murdered victims in Los Angeles. Just three years later, for her to even attempt to bring justice to another high profile story when the rest of the media world was just spitting on it is, for me, a sign of real courage and integrity that is sorely lacking in most of the news media today.

In 2016, twenty one years after the O.J. Trial, the FX cable television network broadcast American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, a dramatic presentation of the trial. The series was built upon a factual publication of CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin entitled, The Run of His Life. It was a serious effort with an impressive cast including Academy Award-winning actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. as O.J. Simpson, Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark, and John Travolta, Nathan Lane, and Courtney B. Vance as defense attorneys Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnny Cochran respectively.

Executive Producer Nina Jacobson promised that “looking back at O.J. helps us understand the world we live in now — 20 years later.” Well, Nina, the world I live in now 30 years later makes me want to turn the channel and run for cover. Justice is not served, then or now.

So my first thought was that I’d rather have a root canal than relive the O.J. Trial! But in a saner, quieter moment, I came to the only conclusion possible. How could I NOT watch? Maybe someone else in the media will catch the example of the likes of Marcia Clark and Dorothy Rabinowitz and grow a spinal column.

O.J. Simpson passed away from cancer at the age of 76 on April 10, 2024, the day after my 71st birthday in my 30th year in prison.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this timely post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls :

In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Detective James McLaughlin and the Police Misconduct List

Convicted for Cash: An American Grand Scam

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”