Place of the Apparition of St. Mary at Lake Ilgis

On June 30, 1967, two teenagers reported seeing the Virgin Mary above the waters of Lake Ilgis near the vanished village of Kvintiskes. Soviet authorities violently suppressed the pilgrimage that followed, but devotion persisted underground until Lithuanian independence. A chapel was consecrated at the site in 2014.

On the evening of June 30, 1967, Juozas Kriauklys, sixteen years old, and his cousin Albina Skvarcinskaite, seventeen, were riding a motorcycle along a stream flowing from Lake Ilgis. The motorcycle stopped without apparent cause. Looking toward the lake, they saw a young woman standing on a rotten pole in or above the water. She was dressed in white with a cape, her golden hair luminous. The teenagers recognized the figure as the Virgin Mary.

Father Jonas Jatulis, the parish priest of nearby Imbradas, confirmed to his parishioners that this was a genuine apparition. Word spread rapidly, and within days crowds were converging on the lake. The Soviet authorities responded with force: militia destroyed crosses erected by pilgrims, barricaded access roads, and physically beat and dispersed worshippers. Despite these measures, devotion continued in secret throughout the remaining decades of Soviet rule.

After Lithuania regained independence in 1990, the site became freely accessible. Pilgrims began openly placing crosses at the apparition location, creating a growing field of devotional markers. In 2014, architect Kazys Tamosecius designed a chapel with a distinctive form resembling a papal mitre, and Bishop Emeritus Jonas Kauneckas consecrated it on June 30, the anniversary of the apparition.