CORONA — In June of 1968, as she was driving her husband to work, Veronica Lueken heard on the radio that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot.
His family asked the country to pray, so she did, and the Queens housewife soon became overcome with the smell of roses, according to her followers.
The smell is a sign of St. Therese the Little Flower, one of the most popular Catholic saints. The saint later visited Lueken, she claimed, and told her to hold a rosary vigil at St. Robert Bellarmine church in Bayside Hills — which eventually moved to a shrine in the middle of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
And in the nearly half-century since then, the late "Veronica the Seer," or "Veronica of the Cross" has become a controversial spiritual figure who has been denounced as a fraud by the Diocese of Brooklyn but has been embraced by thousands of followers.
On Saturday, her remaining believers will celebrate the 46th anniversary of her receiving messages from Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary, with a vigil at the former Vatican pavilion site at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, which starts at 7 p.m.
"This message really resonated with me deeply, it moved me profoundly," said Michael Mangan, 57, who is the president of St. Michael's World Apostolate, a lay order founded in 1999 to continue Lueken's vigils.
It was the "veracity" of the message that clicked for Mangan, who grew up in Boston and moved to New York to follow Lueken in 1976.
"The beauty, the power, the grace, the prophecy. I saw that what the Virgin Mary and Jesus were saying was really unfolding in front of our very eyes," he said.
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Mangan is the leader of one of two groups who follow Lueken's messages; her followers split after she died in 1995.
The leader of the other group, Our Lady of the Roses, Mary Help of Mothers Shrine, did not respond to calls for comment.
Both still pray the rosary at their separate shrines feet apart in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The space was agreed upon following a lawsuit in the 1970s between Lueken and residents of Bayside Hills, where she began the vigils.
What started off as small gatherings grew over the years, as word of the seer's messages spread around the world. Thousands would crowd the small residential streets around St. Bellarmine to wait for the Blessed Mother to appear, and hear Lueken's messages.
"Police were out there, [neighbors] took out the statue, they blockaded the pilgrims," Mangan said. "They tried everything."
The Bayside Hills Civic Association took them to court, where a judge settled on a compromise to hold the vigils at the park.
Neighbors didn't like the pilgrims or the "Leukenites," as they were called. And the Diocese of Brooklyn didn't like them either.
They denounced the apparitions, and continue to.
A spokeswoman for the diocese, Carolyn Erstad, sent along a formal statement from Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio written in 2014.
It reaffirms that "these supposed visions completely lack credibility, and the promotion or dissemination of these alleged apparitions has been done without ecclesiastical permission and in direct defiance of the legitimate Ecclesiastical Authority."
He wrote it to clear up confusion with the borough's Catholics, he said.
"This judgment has been maintained over the course of three decades, due to the fact that the alleged visions contain serious theological errors and contradict both Sacred Scripture and the Magisterial teaching of the Church," he wrote.
Mangan, though, said the diocese hasn't fully investigated the visions.
"We're not saying to prove the thing, just do what you're supposed to do," he said, requesting a "fair and open-minded investigation."
"They think it's crazy," he said of Lueken's messages — which include saying a former pope was an impostor, denouncing modern changes in the church and predicting World War III.
"If this has been going on for 46 years — what if it is the Blessed Mother, Bishop? You're going to be accountable here. What are you going to say when you appear before God?"
After Lueken's death, attendance at the weekly vigils declined, although there is still a large global following, the group says.
"We used to have 5,000 people following this shrine at one time," James Donohue, a member of St. Michael's, said.
"When the seer dies, she stops getting the messages, and the people stop coming. Instead of having 1,000 people on the ground, or 500, it went all the way down...and now we're down to a smaller crowd."
It doesn't discourage him, he said, adding that "You need to know the Catholic faith to know that what's in the messages are true."
Attendance was up at the May crowning of the Mary statue, a Catholic tradition.
Mariana Consoli, 12, recently traveled from Bristol, Pa. to crown the Blessed Mother — something all of her older sisters have done.
"It's such a great honor, and it's so special," she said, dressed in white and wearing a crown. She lead the procession, which traveled around the pavilion multiple times while praying in English, Spanish and Latin.
It was a stark contrast to the nearby skate park and cricket games going on at the park.
Consoli's family has been attending vigils for years, and they return to the shrine a few times a year even after moving to Pennsylvania. It's an important part of their life, she said, and continues to be.
"My mom was always Catholic but she wasn't very strong," she said. "This shrine helped her back to the faith."
