On the morning of Oct. 9, 2023, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, located in Wisconsin, celebrated a new feast day Mass marking the anniversary of Marian apparitions witnessed by the Belgian immigrant Adele Brise in 1859.
Bishop David L. Ricken, bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, presided over the first Solemnity of Our Lady of Champion as hundreds watched, 164 years after the original apparitions. The story of how this shrine came to be and the Marian miracle it commemorates is also the story of Catholic immigrant communities, survival and devotion in the United States.
The story of the miracle
Adele Brise (changed to “Brice” when her family immigrated to the United States) was born in Dion-le-Val, Belgium, on Jan. 30, 1831, to devout Catholic parents. When she received her first Communion, she and several other friends promised Mary that they would become religious teaching sisters in Champion, Belgium. But as a child she left school to stay home and help her family, and in 1855 her parents moved her family to the United States. After a six-week voyage to Wisconsin, the Brise family joined the largest American Belgian settlement near what is today Champion, Wis.
One day, while carrying grain to the grist mill, Brise spotted a woman dressed in flowing white clothes, standing among maple and hemlock trees. The woman did not speak during their first meeting. A few days later, Brise was making the 10-mile journey to Mass with her sister and friend and saw the same woman again, standing among the trees. Brise was the only one who saw her, and she continued on to Mass.
On the long walk back home, Adele spotted the same woman for a third time and approached her. Falling to her knees before the woman, Brise asked the question, “In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?” She identified herself as the Queen of Heaven, and according to a letter written by Adele to a friend on Nov. 25, 1889: “she spoke and said to pray for the Conversion of the Sinners and to instruct the little children in their religion.”
Adele returned home and committed herself to travel from home to home offering to do household chores in exchange for teaching the children. After years of traveling alone, Brise amassed a small following of women who became a community of Third Order Franciscan women. Belgian immigrants in the area built a convent, school and larger wooden chapel on the grounds to accommodate devotees in 1861. Above the chapel entrance they inscribed “Notre Dame De Bon Secours, Priez Pour Nous” (“Our Lady of Good Help, Pray for Us”), a popular Belgian devotion to Mary.
The shrine’s current chapel was dedicated by Bishop Paul Rhode in 1942. The crypt holds a shrine to Mary, which was built on the site of the apparitions. The crypt also contains crutches of those who were cured after visiting the shrine. The statue on display, made in France, was donated to the chapel in 1907. An interesting small detail is the stained glass window in the upper church, which features two trees––a maple and a hemlock, between which Mary had appeared.
An American journey
Brise’s journey with her family to the United States resembled those made by many Catholic immigrants, and for those immigrating up until the 20th century, Catholic churches and schools were few and far in between. Often, immigrants settled in centralized communities like Southern Door County in Wisconsin. Founded in 1858 by four Belgian immigrant families, the Door County town of Brussels and its surrounding communities are now the largest Belgian-American communities in the United States.
Brise served as an early model for Catholic women serving the needs of isolated Catholic families in America. At the same time, Brise’s story is one of survival amid a dangerous American landscape. The sisters and the children they served struggled with food shortages, overdue bills and a croup epidemic. Her handwritten letters in the Marian Collection at the University of Dayton reveal they faced weeks without funds.
Twelve years after Mary last appeared to Brise, another miracle occurred. The Great Peshtigo Fire broke out on Oct. 8, 1871, killing between 1,200 and 2,400 people. In the flat, dry terrain of Champion, the fire spread toward the shrine. People from the countryside fled to the chapel where Brise prayed for Mary’s protection. Those who gathered there that night picked up the statue of Mary and carried it in procession around the sanctuary, praying the rosary and singing hymns. Early in the morning, the convent, school and chapel were among the few things that remained unscathed.
The date, Oct. 8, continues to draw thousands of people from across the country visiting the shrine and joining in all-night prayer. According to the former shrine caretaker,Karen Tipps, these pilgrimages were common and seen as a sign of devotion. She recalls an 82-year-old man who walked the pilgrimage route with his family in their Sunday clothes until they had blisters on their feet. They stopped along the journey at white roadside chapels scattered every two or three miles, built so that pilgrims could rest, recover and pray. The pilgrimages began to be less common in the 1960s until 2003, when a group of Latino men revived the tradition of this two-hour walk.
Although this tradition recalls the miracle of the chapel’s survival, many Catholic immigrants from other communities also make the pilgrimage to the site to commemorate Mary’s protection of settlers from the rough terrain. At the same time, however, Brise’s story cannot be told without acknowledging the colonial framework of her family’s settlement in what Mary described to Brise as “wild country.”
Brise’s family settled in an area belonging to the Ho-Chunk, one of two First Nations of Wisconsin. She traveled along a well-traveled Native American path, and it was there that she encountered Mary between two trees native to the region. The way Mary looks is also worth noting—with white skin and golden hair reflecting a conception of Mary born from Brise’s own face. The vast majority of approved Marian miracles up until the 20th century were white, reflecting the skin color of the people who saw them.
Approval for worship
Despite the pilgrimage’s popularity, the apparition was not officially approved for worship until 2023, when the Holy See’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments authorized the National Shrine to celebrate an annual feast day. “This new Solemnity of Our Lady of Champion,” Bishop Ricken explained, “although only celebrated on the grounds of the National Shrine at this time, is a day to remember the profound messages of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her unique presence in the United States.”
On April 20, 2023, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help underwent a name change and became the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. From then on, it would celebrate an annual solemnity day on Oct. 9, the anniversary day of the second and third Marian apparitions witnessed by Adele Brise in 1859.
In many ways, the shrine in Champion represents all the ways in which Mary speaks to and protects the poor and marginalized, especially early Catholic immigrants. For Catholics in a new country, Mary traveled with them as a memory of home and through apparitions planted a spiritual route in their new home.
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Special thanks to Michele Jennings, visiting librarian/archivist, Marian Library; and Henry Handley, collections librarian and assistant professor at the University of Dayton.
