Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at images in contemporary Catholicism. Centring on the case of a Maltese Catholic who since 2006 has claimed to see visions and receive messages from the Virgin Mary, it looks at the place of images and film circulated by his followers on YouTube, and broadcast on TV.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the place of images in contemporary Catholicism. Centring on the case of Angelik Caruana, a Maltese Catholic who since 2006 has claimed to see visions and receive messages from the Virgin Mary, it looks at the place of images and film of Angelik circulated by his followers on YouTube, and broadcast on TV. It suggests that the images serve as evidential traces of the presence of Our Lady, that in some circumstances themselves take on that presence. As images of the miraculous, they carry the miraculous with them.

The images, however, have also become tied up in debates about the authenticity of Angelik's visions - in televised documentary programmes about Angelik, and in the Diocesan commission set up to investigate the visions. Here, the images become an obverse trace - evidence of absence, not presence. The paper considers this play of presence and absence in the broader history of Catholic ideas about imagery.