n historical traditions involving apparitions are celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church. These apparitions do not technically fall in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith approved category, since they generally predate the formation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1542. They are recognized based on the papal declaration of the feast day rather than formal analysis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Our Lady of the Pillar[edit]
In the year AD 39, according to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint James the Great, in Zaragoza, Spain. The vision is now called Our Lady of the Pillar and is the only reported Marian apparition before her Assumption. The Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar was built in Zaragoza, Spain and a key piece of Roman Catholic Marian art, the statue of Our Lady of the Pillar, refers to this apparition.

Our Lady of the Snow[edit]
Our Lady of the Snow is based on a legend that during the pontificate of Pope Liberius, during the night of August the 5th, snow fell on the summit of the Esquiline Hill in Rome. Based on a vision that night, a basilica was built in honour of Our Lady, on the spot that had been covered with snow.

The church built there is now the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and the feast was celebrated at that church for centuries on August 5 each year. However, there was no mention of this alleged miracle in historical records until a few hundred years later, not even by Pope Sixtus III in his dedicatory inscription, and it may be that the legend has no historical basis. However, in the 14th century the feast was extended to all the churches of Rome and finally it was made a universal feast by Pope Pius V.[22]

Our Lady of Walsingham[edit]
According to the tradition of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout Saxon noblewoman, in 1061 in Walsingham, England, instructing her to construct a shrine resembling the place of the Annunciation. The shrine passed into the care of the Canons Regular sometime between 1146 and 1174.

Late in 1538, King Henry VIII’s soldiers sacked the priory at Walsingham, killed two monks and destroyed the shrine. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII re-established the restored 14th century Slipper Chapel as a Roman Catholic shrine. The Holy House had been rebuilt at the Catholic Church of the Annunciation at King's Lynn (Walsingham was part of this Catholic parish in 1897).