A friend told me about some apparitions of Our Lady in the 19th century in the US state of Wisconsin, which have been approved by the Vatican. What can you tell me about them?
Even though I grew up in Wisconsin myself, I must admit that I had not heard of these apparitions either. I first became aware of them several years ago when a friend from Wisconsin mentioned in passing that she was going to visit the shrine where the apparitions took place.
Here are the facts. In the autumn of 1859, a 28-year-old Belgian-born woman named Adele Brise was walking in the forest near the small town of Champion, Wisconsin, when she saw the first of three apparitions of Our Lady.
The name Champion, by the way, was suggested by Adele herself, because it was the name of a little village near Namur in Belgium, where she had planned to join the convent as a nun before her parents emigrated to the United States. Today, with a population of around 5000, Champion lies very close to Green Bay, home of the Green Bay Packers NFL team.
One of Adele’s many household chores involved traveling along a wooded trail to carry the family’s wheat to the grist mill. She knew the trail well and often used it to get around in the dense Wisconsin forest.
On that autumn day, she was walking along the trail, carrying wheat for her family, when she saw a mysterious, beautiful lady surrounded by heavenly light and standing between a maple and a hemlock tree. She described the woman as being dressed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist, with blond hair and twelve stars around her head.
The Blessed Virgin appeared to Adele three times. On the final visit, 9 October 1859, Our Lady introduced herself as the “Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners.”
Her message to Adele was simple. She asked Adele to offer her Communion for the conversion of sinners and to gather the children in that wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation: specifically, the catechism, the sign of the cross, and how to approach the sacraments. The Queen of Heaven imparted a final message to Adele saying, “Go, and fear nothing, I will help you.”
This was the catalyst for Adele’s lifelong mission. She immediately set out to visit families within a 50-mile radius of her home to share the Gospel and teach them the catechism. Most of the families were Belgian immigrants like herself but, unlike her, they had lost their faith after arriving in America. She would go so far as to do the household chores for the families in exchange for having some time to instruct the children.
Adele went on to gather other women to help her with her mission and they established a schoolhouse and a convent. Her father built a chapel at the site of the apparitions, which eventually became a shrine to Our Lady of Good Help. The name was taken from what the Blessed Mother had told Adele: “I will help you.”
In 2022, the Vatican gave its formal approval to the apparitions, recognising the newly named National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion as an approved apparition site. Since then, the number of pilgrims traveling to the shrine has increased from 10,000 a year to more than 200,000 at present.
Bishop David Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay, who initiated the formal investigation into the apparitions, recently said: “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.”
In June, 2024, the US Catholic bishops voted unanimously to begin the process of officially declaring Adele Brise a saint. I will write more about that process and about Adele’s life in my next column.