Consecration and entrustment to Mary
The consecration and entrustment to the Virgin Mary is a personal or collective act of Marian devotion among Catholics, with the Latin terms oblatio, servitus, commendatio and dedicatio being used in this context. Consecration is an act by which a person is dedicated to a sacred service, or an act which separates an object, location or region from a common and profane mode to one for sacred use. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments clarifies that in this context, "It should be recalled, however, that the term "consecration" is used here in a broad and non-technical sense: the expression is use of 'consecrating children to Our Lady', by which is intended placing children under her protection and asking her maternal blessing for them".
The Blessed Virgin Mary venerated as The Virgin of the Navigators, 1531–1536, with her protective mantle covering those entrusted to her
Sacred image used for the Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Fr. Maximilian Kolbe 1939
The Brown scapular has been worn by Carmelites for centuries as a sign of their consecration to Mary.
Marian devotions are external pious practices directed to the person of Mary, mother of God, by members of certain Christian traditions. They are performed in Catholicism, High Church Lutheranism, Anglo-Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, but generally rejected in other Christian denominations.
Madonna and five angels, Botticelli, c. 1485
Marian Votive Shrine at the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd (Rosemont, Pennsylvania)
A statue of Mother Mary in the Lutheran church of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune, Strasbourg
Our Lady of Kazan has been the subject of devotions both in the Catholic Church and in Eastern Orthodoxy.