This article deals with how, in the urban setting of Madang, Papua New Guinea, Marian
devotion is deployed in response to domestic and gender-based violence. While providing
insight into the lived religious experiences of Catholic women living in Madang, this article
shows how Mary empowers her followers to resist violence, yet, at the same time, paradoxically,
is instrumental in sanctioning women to tolerate violence. Josephine’s ‘journey of
violence’ reveals not only Josephine’s turning to Mary, but more so, her negotiations with
values belonging to different cultural logics. Caught between ‘tradition’, Christianity and
‘modernity’, Josephine and other Catholic women engage in painful processes of self-analysis
and self-transformation to adapt to and change their situation. In these processes, Mary
is used as a role model.