The messages emphasize prayer (especially recitation of the Holy Rosary) and penance in combination with cryptic prophecies warning of sacerdotal persecution and heresy within the Catholic Church.

[2][better source needed] The image also became affiliated with The Lady of All Nations movement, with which the message shares some similarities.

The local ordinary of the convent, John Shojiro Ito, Bishop of Niigata (r. 1962–1985),[3] recognized "the supernatural character of a series of mysterious events concerning the statue of the Holy Mother Mary" and authorized "the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita" within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Niigata in a 1984 pastoral letter.

[5] In 1973, Sasagawa reported apparitions, as well as manifesting the stigmata and a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary which was said to have wept on 101 occasions.

[8] The contents of the third message were: My dear daughter, listen well to what I have to say to you... As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity... the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful.

[15][b] Dr. Sawada of the Niigata Rosai Hospital in Jōetsu verified that she was 'incurably deaf' and issued documents for her to receive a state subsidy.

[16][c] Dr. Arai of the Eye and Ear Division of the Akita Red Cross Hospital also verified her complete deafness.

[20] On August 4, 1981, a Korean woman named Teresa Chun Sun Ho had a terminal brain tumor allegedly cured after friends and relatives prayed for the intercession of Our Lady of Akita.

[21][better source needed] Yasuda wrote that according to Chun and other October 1983 Korean pilgrims, the cure "had been declared miraculous by Church authorities of Korea".

[24] Yasuda wrote that in June 1973 "in the center of [Sasagawa's] palm were two red scratches in the form of a cross" which seemed to have "been engraved in the skin" and began to bleed a few days later.

"[28] A third nun, who had been the sacristan, described that she "saw in the middle of the palm of the right hand that a wound in the form of a cross had been cut with something like the tip of a blade.

[32] Having been advised that preliminary jurisdiction resides with the local ordinary, the following year he convened an inquiry commission which arrived at the conclusion that it is "not in a position to prove the supernatural events".

[33] On April 22, 1984, Bishop Ito, noting that the case had been under examination for eight years,[1] issued a statement that he did not find in the events "any elements which are contrary to Catholic faith and morals".

Ratzinger gave his verbal approval to Ito's 1984 letter,[30] while not rendering "judgment about the credibility of the events".

[38][39] In 1990, Peter Shirayanagi, Archbishop of Tokyo and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan told the Italian periodical 30 Giorni that "the events of Akita are no longer to be taken seriously.

[42] On October 27, 2019, WQPH 98.3 FM, a Catholic radio station broadcasting in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, broke the news that Sasagawa had received a new message.

On October 6, 2019, Sasagawa was awakened by her guardian angel and told, "Cover yourself in ashes, and please pray a rosary of reparation every day.