The apparition at La Salette, on 19 September 1846 to two young shepherd children, Melanie Calvat and Massimino Giraud, was the only one when Our Lady appeared to cry and to call for conversion. The apparition was officially recognised by the Church through the Bishop Mgr Bruilard, on 19 September 1851, with the following statement: “We confirm that the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary contains all the signs of truth and that the faithful have good reasons to believe them without doubt or uncertainty”. Our Lady first appeared on 19 September 1846, a Saturday at three in the afternoon while the children were tending their flock on Mount Planeau.
The children saw a light in a valley. They described it as follows: "The sun seemed to have fallen in that place ". In the bright light they saw a woman seated with her elbows on her knees and he face hidden in her hands. The Lady was simply dressed with the dress of the times. This gave the children, who had never left their village, a sense of trust and familiarity. Although her attire was simple the Lady was radiant with light and she wore a diadem of roses and sunrays on her head; she hid her hands in the sleeves of her dress. As she cried Our Lady spoke to the children in French and then in dialect: "Come closer my children, do not be afraid: I have come to give you an important message. I My people do not submit I will have to let the arm of my Son go free. It is so strong and heavy that they cannot bear it. How long I have suffered for you! Since I have the mission to pray to my Son continually I do not want him to abandon you. With all your prayers and acts you can never compensate the trouble I have taken for your. I have given you six days in which to work, I reserved the seventh for myself and you refuse to give it to me. This is what make my Son’s arm so heavy! Drivers do nothing but take the name of my Son in vain . These are the two things which weigh on the arm of my Son. If the harvest is lost it is your fault. I showed you last year with the potatoes: you did not notice. Indeed when you find rotten potatoes you swear against my Son. They will continue to rot this year, by Christmas there will be none left …". Melania did not understand the word "potato" she thought Our Lady said "apple". The Lady, realising that Melanie failed to understand said: "You do not understand my children, I will tell you in another way:. If you have wheat, it will do no good to sow it, for what you sow the vermin will eat, and whatever part of it springs up will crumble into dust when you thresh it. A great famine is coming. But before that happens, children under seven years of age will be seized with trembling and die in the arms of those holding them. The others will pay for their sins by hunger. The grapes will rot and the walnuts will become worm-eaten".
The Lady entrusted a secret to Melanie and Massimino and she said: "If they convert, the stones and rocks will change into wheat, and potatoes will be found sown in the earth. Do you say your prayers properly, my children?"".
Then Our Lady asked the children to pray intensely and she disappeared. Massimino and Melanie saw her disappear and also the light disappeared.
With regard to the secret, although the text was made public for the first time in 1879 with the imprimatur of Bishop Zola of Lecce, in 1923, with a decree dated 9 May the Holy See condemned the book written by Melanie and added it to the List of banned books. It should be made clear that the Church did not condemn the secret in itself, that is secret part of the message which Our Lady revealed to the children in 1846, but only the version published by Melanie in 1879.
Before 1923 the Holy See tried to stop the diffusion of that and other unofficial versions of "secret" in circulation at the time"; in fact these writings were used by some to attack the Church. This explains why in 1915 the Holy See prohibited the publication of comments on the ‘secret’ of La Salette" because they differed from those revealed by Our Lady to the children and communicated to Pius XI in 1851.
In Banneux there were apparitions from January to March 1933, to Mariette Beco, a poor girl. The apparition said she was “Our Lady of the Poor”. On 22 August 1949 Bishop Kerkhofs of Lieges recognised the apparitions with this declaration: “In conscience we believe without reserve that The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared eight times to a Mariette Beco.