Ilača

Virgin Mary statue

Ilača is the most important Catholic pilgrimage site in the historical region of Syrmia.[7] The Marian Ilača apparitions were reported in 1865, seven years after the famous Lourdes apparitions.[7] Shepard from Ilača Petar Lazin claimed that he saw a water on the middle of the field road although there was no rain, and that once he made a whole the water source started there that haven't stop since that time.[7] At the same night, another villager, young Đuka Ambrušević saw a Virgin Mary with a child in his dream and she told him that it is her water spring, that he need to build a small wall around it so that stock don't drink from it.[7] When he woke up he saw the image from his dream next to his bed.[7] Initially church authorities tried to prevent congregation from pilgrimage.[7] Later it was permitted by progressive bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer.[8] In 1866 small chapel was built next to the spring, and in 1870 construction of a church started.[7] Ilača became target of pilgrimage for Roman Catholic Croats, Germans, Hungarians as well as for Eastern-rite Catholic Pannonian Rusyns.[7] During the Croatian War of Independence church was destroyed by tanks of Yugoslav People's Army active in the area of self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Oblast of SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia.[7] Once the UNTAES finished its peace mission in the Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia in 1998 pilgrimage started once again to take place.[7]