The United States has only one Marian apparition site approved by Vatican

Today is the solemnity of the only Marian apparition to have occurred in the United States that has been approved by the Vatican.

The annual solemnity of Our Lady of Champion celebrated each 9 October marks the apparitions witnessed by Adele Brise, an immigrant from Belgium living in northern Wisconsin, in 1859.

In 2022, the Vatican gave its formal stamp of approval to the apparitions Brise witnessed, recognising the newly named National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin, as an approved apparition site. 

Since the apparitions were approved, the number of pilgrims traveling to the shrine has increased from 10,000 a year to more than 200,000 a year presently, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA).

“The Blessed Mother is calling people to come to the shrine to experience the peace there, the simplicity; the basics of the Gospel, the catechism are exposed there,” Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay, who initiated the formal investigation into the apparitions, told CNA at this year’s June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Louisville, Kentucky.

Our Lady of Champion served as the patroness of the Northern Marian Route of this year’s National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which stopped at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion on June 16 on its way to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.

Back in 1859, on 9 October, 28-year-old Brise reported seeing the first of three apparitions while walking in the woods in Champion, Wisconsin. Brise said a woman who was dressed in white and wearing a crown of gold stars on her head asked her to pray for the conversion of sinners and teach children about the faith, reports CNA.

Brise immediately set out to visit families within a 50-mile radius of her home to share the Gospel with them and teach them the catechism. They were Belgian immigrants like herself, but unlike Brise, they had lost their faith since coming to America.

“She’s really current for now because we’re facing the same problems – people not knowing the faith, people having fallen away from the Church. She’s a model for us of what it means to be an evangelising catechist. She’s very pertinent for today as well,” Ricken told CNA.

The bishop added: “From the moment of the apparitions, Adele furiously traveled the wild country of northeast Wisconsin teaching children. She would go so far as to do the household chores for the families in exchange for simply having some time to instruct the children.”

After Brise reported seeing the first apparition, her parish priest advised her that if she saw another apparition again she should ask of it: “In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?”

Brise did so, and in response heard the following words:

“I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received holy Communion this morning and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them,” the apparition said.

Brise went on to establish a schoolhouse and convent. Brise’s father built a chapel at the site of the apparitions, which eventually became a shrine to Our Lady of Good Help. 

Although she suffered an accident at a young age that left her blind in her right eye, those who knew Brise best described her cheerfulness, fervent piety and simple religious ways, notes the shrine’s website.

Upon receiving her first Holy Communion while living in Belgium, Adele and a few close friends promised the Blessed Virgin Mary that they would devote their lives to becoming religious teaching sisters in the country. But then her parents decided to move to the America alongside other Belgium settlers.

After the six-week voyage to America, the Brise family joined the largest Belgian settlement near present-day Champion. The lives of the Belgian pioneers and settlers were difficult, and many died in the harsh Wisconsin winters.

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion is celebrating the solemnity of Our Lady this 9 October with a Mass, rosary procession, adoration and other prayer events for those gathered to celebrate the solemnity.

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Photo: The Marian shrine of Our Lady of Champion, Champion, Wisconsin, USA. (Credit: National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion.)

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