Quotes of the Day

For Catholics around the world, Aug. 15 is among the holiest of feast days. It marks the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, when the mother of Jesus is believed to have been physically taken into heaven after death so that her body would not suffer earthly decay. For the Catholics of Sri Lanka, Aug. 15 this year marked a similar miracle: the survival of a 500-year-old statue of the Virgin, through the fiery tumult of a quarter-century of civil war, which was re-ensconced in a jungle church that was once again safe to travel to.

The voice coming through the public-address system was familiar yet strange. I had not heard it in at least 27 years, not since I had traveled to the sacred Madhu Shrine in northern Sri Lanka in August 1982 when I was a child and on pilgrimage with my family: "Aandavane" ("Oh, Holy Lord" in Tamil), "Aandavane." The words spread through the church compound where half a million others had made the same journey to see Madhu Matha, the Mother of Madhu, in her sacred precincts.

For 25 years, Madhu, some 185 miles (300 km) from the capital of Colombo, remained well within the battlegrounds of the civil war between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the separatist Tamil Tigers. It was not until April 2008 that the military gained full control of the shrine; the Tigers, who demanded a separate state for ethnic Tamils on the island nation, were finally crushed in May 2009.

Few made the pilgrimage amid the war, and those who did undertook the journey mostly during lulls in fighting. "We came, we worshipped, we left — that was it, we never wanted to stay back," says Lesley Fernando, who is Sinhalese and was brave enough to visit the shrine during the fragile truces in the war. (About 7% of Sri Lanka's population is Catholic, with adherents among both of the nation's major ethnicities: the Sinhalese, who are otherwise mostly Buddhist, and the Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu.) But never have pilgrims been seen in such numbers as they were last week. Numbering some 500,000, they still had to go through several security checkpoints to reach the shrine, though each stop was a formality compared to those during the stringent heights of the civil war.

There was, however, no escaping the after-effects of the war on the road to Madhu. There were armed personnel on either side of the road, bunkers with dugouts manned by soldiers, occasionally a bomb-damaged building. The railroad that ran parallel to the trunk road had been reduced to a long mound of earth, as if it were the trail left by some giant worm. The iron tracks had long been removed to construct the many bunkers.

Pilgrims also passed through camps where some of the more than 280,000 people who were displaced by the last phase of the fighting now live. At the turnoff to the shrine, pilgrims were strictly warned not to stop on the side of the road till they reached the church compound. They were told that the jungles on the sides of the road were still littered with mines and other ordnance; red skull-and-crossbones signs drove the message home. Still, the pilgrims arrived in the tens of thousands, in vans, buses, trucks, public transport, an old British double-decker bus, some in tuk-tuks, the three-wheeler rickshaws that traverse the island. At the shrine, the faint but constant hum of prayers and hymns rose above the rustling of pilgrims' feet. Large piles of slippers, sandals and an assortment of shoes of every nature accumulated by the doors outside the church. Families prayed together, others lined up in a long queue that slowly snaked around the church to get a brief moment to touch the altar where the venerated statue is kept. I saw four young girls kneel and walk the entire length of the church on their knees to pray at the altar.

Though the main church has survived almost unscathed, the side church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on its right still bears the marks of years of war. Its roof was blown off and at the end is a ruined statue of Jesus Christ, destroyed by something that hit the building. Worshippers have tied coins to the statue as part of their vows. You can see the sides of its pedestal pockmarked with shrapnel.

The last year of the civil war was particularly perilous for the shrine. The military had begun a multipronged advance into the Tiger-controlled area in late 2007, and Madhu was about six miles (10 km) north of the line. Earlier that year, 10,000 people were still taking refuge in the church compound, believing the Virgin would protect them. But by February 2008, recalls the Rev. S. Emilianuspillai, then caretaker of the shrine, it was clear that the shrine itself was in danger — and part of the war. On April 3, 2008, fighting had isolated 17 people at the shrine, including four priests and three nuns. Emilianuspillai tells TIME that the Tigers, breaking an agreement not to enter the compound, had moved mortar launchers into church property and started firing. Says Emilianuspillai: "I went into the shrine and hid there. The shelling went on for hours."

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The chief concern was the safety of the statue once the compound was being used to launch attacks on government forces. Later that same afternoon, the priests received orders from the bishop to remove the sacred relic and take it farther north, deeper into Tiger-held areas, rather than risk heading for the front. The journey that evening, to start at 6:30, was still fraught. Emilianuspillai recalls not just shelling but a heavy rain delaying departure and then, nearly a mile into the journey, a shell falling near the vehicle in front of the one bearing the statue. But, he says, "nothing, absolutely nothing, happened to the statue. We kept moving."

The statue had been in grave danger before. In the late 17th century, the Protestant Dutch tried to eradicate the Roman Catholicism brought to the island by the Portuguese. The Virgin Mother had been moved from the shrine then as well and secreted away. In the 21st century, the statue shared the fate of many Sri Lankans, becoming a refugee as it was carried from church to church until July 2008, when it was in a more secure spot. By November, it was once again at the shrine, ready for the outpouring of piety during this year's Feast of the Assumption. Last week, at a corner of the church, people kept filling bags, paper towels and handkerchiefs with earth from a small hole in the ground. The location is where Catholics believe the statue — miraculously hidden in a tree — was rediscovered by a woodcutter following the Dutch persecution. They believe the earth contains miraculous healing powers. "This is holiest of the holiest for us; the Virgin has always kept us safe," says Benedict Perera, 70.

At the shrine's grounds, people spoke of how the statue was a symbol of peace and hope for all Sri Lankans, even during the darkest hours of war. "What you see is a miracle. The church has not been damaged; it has survived. So has the statue, and you see people from all religions flocking here," says the Rev. Mahavilachchiye Wimala Thero, a Buddhist monk from the central district of Anuradhapura. "This is the miracle, that this statue can bring together all Sri Lankans — that is the hope it gives these people." As the statue was paraded around the compound, many worshippers wept openly. Fathers lifted their young children on their shoulders to show them the statue, while smaller kids who had fallen asleep during the three-hour mass were hurriedly awoken to stare drowsily as the compound reverberated to tens of thousands of voices singing "Ave Maria."

"We believed in our Mother to bring us hope and peace. Now we can hope for a better country," says Singarayan Celestine, 70, a Tamil who brought his extended family to Madhu. His life had been devastated by the war: two of his sons were killed in cross fire, another went missing while crossing the front lines during the last hours of the fighting. "I am old," he says. "I can't look after my family for much longer. I have lost children to the war." Holding one of his grandchildren while the others played, he says, "We need a better and peaceful future." He adds, "The Virgin has brought us together, she has given us hope. It is now up to us to live together."

• Amantha Perera
• The Catholic feast of the Assumption took on special meaning on the island nation as pilgrims once again could travel to a shrine to the mother of Jesus