The witnesses “were ordinary people who lived in a very ordinary little village” and included “men, women and children ranging in age from four-year-old John Curry (who spoke no Irish) to Bridget Trench in her seventies (who spoke no English).”

The 2017 concert sees the world premiere of ‘Beautiful Things’, an original composition by acclaimed Celtic harper Cormac de Barra of Dublin, which commemorates the apparition of Our Lady in Knock in 1879.

John Curry was “A man whose only quiet boast was that he was an altar boy from his childhood in Knock to his death at Sacred Heart home with the Little Sisters of the Poor – rarely if ever missing daily Mass – and Holy Communion.”

The purpose of the pilgrimage is to have the remains of the youngest witness to the Knock apparition reinterred at Old St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.

The body of the youngest witness to the Apparition of Knock, John Curry, is to be buried in the grounds of the old St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.