Our Lady of Aberdeen

The once strictly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland celebrates the feast day of Our Lady of Aberdeen every 9 July.

[1] At the beginning of the Scottish Reformation (c. 1559), many Christian art and consecrated religious objects from churches and, from St Machar's Cathedral in Old Aberdeen in particular, were either destroyed by the officials of the Kirk or given for safe keeping to Catholic sympathisers.

[2] Writing in 1909, Dom Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, the respected historian of the illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland, declared, "The Abbé MacPherson, than whom no one was more conversant with the history of the Catholic Church in Scotland since the Reformation, asserted that, 'the preservation of the ancient Faith was due, under God, to the House of Gordon'.

For historic details of Notre Dame du Bon Succès and Our Lady of Aberdeen see the papers by Ray McAleese – below.

The monograph by Ron Smith (see below) gives a devotional account of beliefs about Our Lady of Aberdeen and Notre Dame du Bon Succès.