Known across Asia as "the Lourdes of the East," the devotion to Our Lady of Good Health at Velankanni rests on three traditional events rather than a single dated apparition. Mary and the Christ Child are said to have appeared first to a shepherd boy carrying milk, who offered a cup to the Child; the vessel was found miraculously refilled on his return. She appeared a second time to a lame boy selling buttermilk under a banyan tree, healing his legs and asking that a chapel be built on the spot. A third tradition tells of Portuguese sailors, caught in a violent storm in the Bay of Bengal, who vowed to build a church wherever they came safely ashore, and landed at Velankanni.
Unlike the apparitions investigated under the modern episcopal process, Velankanni's devotion rests on centuries of unbroken local tradition rather than a single commission of inquiry. Its recognition has come through the Church's practical acts of favor: the steady growth of pilgrimage, Pope John XXIII's decision in 1962 to raise the shrine to a minor basilica, and Saint John Paul II's choice of Velankanni for the World Day of the Sick in 2002.
In August 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a letter approved by Pope Francis, granted a nihil obstat to devotion at the shrine, recognizing "the constant action of the Holy Spirit in this place." It was a landmark acknowledgment from Rome for one of Asia's most beloved Marian shrines, where Hindu, Muslim, and Christian pilgrims pray side by side.
The icon at Velankanni is unusual among Marian images for depicting Mary dressed in an Indian sari, a visual detail that has made the shrine a point of particular devotion for the Tamil Catholic diaspora worldwide, from Malaysia to Singapore to the Gulf states.