Knock (An Cnoc in Irish, meaning The Hill – but now more generally known in Irish as Cnoc Mhuire, "Hill of (the Virgin) Mary") is a small town in east County Mayo in Ireland. Knock's notability comes from the Knock Shrine Apparition of 1879. At 8:00PM on 21 August 1879, it was reported that the Virgin Mary, together with St Joseph and St John the Evangelist, appeared to local people.
In the 20th century it became one of Europe's major Roman Catholic Marian shrines, alongside Lourdes and Fatima. One and a half million pilgrims visit Knock Shrine annually. It was visited by Pope John Paul II, a supporter of devotion to the Virgin Mary, in 1979 to commemorate the centenary of the apparition.
