QUINCY -- The fifth annual Boston Marian Conference on Nov. 1 and 2 had a very special guest -- the Virgin Mary herself.

On Nov. 1, Mary appeared in the ballroom of the Boston Marriott Quincy to Ivan Dragicevic, one of six visionaries who saw her in Medjugorje in 1981. Three of those visionaries, including Dragicevic, say that Mary has appeared to them every day since then.

Almost 700 people witnessed Dragicevic have his daily vision at the Marian Conference. He knelt before the altar that had been set up in the ballroom, looked up, and extended his arms. Attendees knelt in reverent silence, rosaries clutched tightly in their hands. Some looked as though they were crying. Dragicevic moved his lips and nodded as if he were speaking to Mary.

"I think it's important for Catholics to come together like this for a couple of days to remind ourselves why we believe what we believe, why we do what we do to evangelize to our families and our community," said Mark Carey, a member of Quincy's Men of Divine Mercy.

Carey has been to Medjugorje and will be going again the week after the Marian Conference. A booth at the conference advertised pilgrimages to Medjugorje, with accommodations at Dragicevic's family home. When he and Dragicevic met, Carey asked him what it's like to see Mary daily.

"When you're seven or eight or 10 minutes in Heaven," Dragicevic said, "then you have to come down to Earth for the next 23 hours and 50 minutes. It's very difficult."

He spends every day in preparation for when the apparition will come. Carey was with him when he had his daily vision on Oct. 31. Carey said the feeling there, and in the ballroom on Nov. 1, was similar to the feeling he gets at Medjugorje.

"I felt the Holy Spirit fill the room," he said. "Tonight was no different."

Dragicevic spoke at the conference with the help of a translator.

"When Our Lady comes, I can no longer see anything in front of me nor behind me, and I have no sense of time nor space," he said. "But what is truly most difficult for me to describe from the encounter with Our Lady is the love with which she is loving us."

It's also hard for him to describe how beautiful she is after his visions end and he must return to "the reality of this world."

"Dear children, I am beautiful because I love you," he said Mary told him back in Medjugorje. "Dear children, love and you too will be beautiful."

"Could there be any more beautiful words that Our Lady gives to us that we can apply to our own lives?" He said.

In 1981, Dragicevic was a 16-year-old living in the former Yugoslavia, a Communist country where expressions of faith were taboo. He worked on a tobacco farm with his family and looked forward to holy days because he could rest. On June 24, the feast of St. John the Baptist, he slept late, and his mother badgered him to get up and get ready for Mass.

"I was there at Mass with my body," he recalled. "I am not so sure that I was there with my soul."

He spent the afternoon playing soccer with his friends. That evening, he went to watch a basketball game at the home of his friend, one of the few people in town with a color TV. He watched the first half of the game, then went home to eat. He never saw the end of the game, and hasn't to this day. On the way back to his friend's house, he heard a voice calling him to "see Our Lady." He continued down an overgrown path and discovered that the voice was coming from a fellow visionary, Vicka Ivankovic. Dragicevic was in disbelief. He saw visionaries Ivanka Ivankovic and Mirjana Dragicevic (no relation to Ivan) kneeling and crying.

"Look up," Ivankovic told him.

"I looked three times and saw the most beautiful image of Our Lady," Dragicevic recalled.

She was floating on a cloud, hands outstretched, wearing a crown of stars. Dragicevic looked for no longer than 15 seconds and ran home, telling no one what he saw. He had never heard of the apparitions at Fatima or Lourdes and considered himself "no better and no worse" than anyone else. He wondered why, out of all people, Mary came to him. He spent the night in fear.

"What if Our Lady comes here to my room?" He asked himself.

The next morning, the mothers of the village had gathered in his home and were talking to his mother. Talking publicly about the apparition was unacceptable in a Communist country. He and some villagers came to the spot where Mary appeared, and she was waiting for him, holding the Infant Jesus in her hand.

"I will never forget that day for as long as I live," Dragicevic said. "Because of that day, I'm sure my life will be at least five years shorter."

She told the visionaries that her name was the Queen of Peace, and she had come because humanity was on the verge of self-destruction. She placed her hand upon their heads, saying, "Dear children, I am with you. I am your mother. Do not be afraid."

Dragicevic has received many messages from Mary over the years, all of them about peace.

"Our Lady has not come to us to bring us fear or punishment," he said. "She has come to us to bring us light, hope, and to bring light into today's tired families."

He once asked her why he had been chosen to receive her vision, and why she didn't make herself known to everyone in the world.

"My dear child," she replied, "you know I do not always look for the best."

He never asked again.

Mary has told Dragicevic that social media is "a new cancer" separating families from God. She offered several solutions: Going to Mass as a family, praying the rosary together, reading Scripture, attending confession monthly, and spending time in adoration.

"I hope that we will all respond to her call, that we will accept her messages, and together that we may be co-creators of a better and more beautiful world, a world that is worthy of the children of God," he said.

Other speakers at the Marian Conference included Immaculee Ilibagiza, peace activist and Rwandan genocide survivor who wrote the book "Left to Tell," about forgiving the men who killed her family; Bishop Cristiano Barbosa; Artie Boyle, a Hingham man who made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2000; Colleen Willard, who said that she was healed of a brain tumor after a pilgrimage to Medjugorje; Father Leo Patalinghug, a host of the "The Father Leo Show" podcast and the cooking show "Savoring the Faith" on Catholic TV; and Archbishop Richard G. Henning, who celebrated a vigil Mass at the conference.

In his homily, Archbishop Henning said that Mary is "our first and best disciple" and one of the gifts that God has given his people so they may escape the "trap" of worldly materialism.

"What do you see?" he asked the assembly. "What are the threads that run across her appearance in the Scriptures? You see her implicit and full trust. Her son offers himself an absolute love and trust to our Heavenly Father, and his mother hears and learns that lesson."

He said that the Annunciation is the most frequently depicted subject in all of Christian art, even more than the Crucifixion. In Europe's ancient churches, it is common to see an image of the Annunciation near or above the doors.

"Mary shows us how to trust," he said, and when you come into the church, you're summoned to let go of your fear, to let go of your ego, to let go of what you think are your own accomplishments and possessions, and trust in Divine Providence. And our mother, she shows us the way."

One of his favorite lines in the Gospel of John is when Mary says of Jesus, "Do whatever he tells you."

"She didn't run away from the cross," the archbishop said. "She was faithful."

He said Mary doesn't appear to powerful people because "they wouldn't notice" her. Instead, she appears to "those who are forgotten and overlooked and vulnerable."

'"They understand what it means to trust in Divine Providence, and they place their trust in her," he said.