Patrick Hill

Life

Patrick Hill was a schoolboy of about thirteen years of age at the time of the apparition at Knock, County Mayo, on 21 August 1879. He was the nephew of one of the village elders and was visiting in the parish that summer. On the evening of the apparition he was sent for after the first witnesses had seen the figures, and arrived at the south gable of the parish church of Saint John the Baptist while the vision was still in progress. Because he was small and agile, he climbed up close to the gable and looked carefully at the figures from a short distance.

His deposition to the Commission of Enquiry of October 1879 is one of the most detailed surviving accounts. He described Our Lady wearing a large brilliant crown and a long white cloak, her hands raised in the attitude of prayer, her eyes turned upward to Heaven. He described Saint Joseph, his head bent in reverence toward Our Lady, and Saint John the Evangelist vested as a bishop, holding a book in his left hand and with the fingers of his right hand raised as if preaching. He described the plain altar, the young Lamb standing upon it, the cross rising behind, and angels in attendance around the Lamb. He stated that he could see the print on the pages of the open book and that he tried to read it before the figures gradually faded.

His youth, sharp memory and the unusually concrete detail of his deposition made his testimony particularly important to the Commission, and it has remained one of the most often quoted accounts of the apparition in the literature of Knock ever since.