Turkey: The construction of the largest statue of Our Lady?

The shrine of Ambarawa, in Indonesia.

The mayor of the Turkish village of Selçuk—near the archaeological site of the ancient city of Ephesus—wants to set up the tallest statue of the Virgin Mary in the world. According to a report dated February 24, 2016, by the Roman missionary news agency Fides, the idea was first proposed by a politician from that region in the Western part of the country, for the express purpose of promoting religious tourism and attracting a flood of Christian pilgrims. His ambition is said to be to make this village of 30,000 inhabitants “one of the leading centers of Christianity”, as was the case with Ephesus in the first century A.D.

Already located on the construction site is the “house of Mary”, discovered in 1891, where the Mother of God reportedly ended her earthly life. Several Popes—Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979 and Benedict XVI in 2006—traveled there on pilgrimage.

At the moment, the tallest Marian statue in the world stands in the shrine of Ambarawa, in the center of the island of Java, in Indonesia. Set up in 2015, it is 42 meters (138 feet) tall.

(Sources: apic/fides – DICI no. 333 dated March 25, 2016)

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