I wish you to do the same

Three times in October 1859, the Virgin Mary appeared to a 28-year-old Belgian immigrant, Adele Brise, in Champion, Wisconsin (USA). This is the only approved Marian apparition in the United States.

In the first apparition, Adele saw a woman dressed in dazzling white, with a yellow belt around her waist and a crown of stars on her head. After a few moments, the Virgin left without having said a word. The following Sunday, the Virgin appeared to Adele during mass. The young woman told her confessor about these apparitions. He made her ask the vision who she was, in the name of God, and what she wanted. Then the Virgin appeared to Adele on her way home, which allowed Adele to ask the questions.

The Virgin replied: “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… Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation… Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing, I will help you.”

The young woman did what Our Lady had asked, until her death in 1896. A chapel is built on the place of the apparition, in Champion, under the title of Our Lady of Good Help.

On December 8, 2010, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Bishop David Ricken, Bishop of Green Bay, Wisconsin, issued an official decree stating: “I declare with moral certainty and in accord with the norms of the Church that the events, apparitions and locutions given to Adele Brise in October, 1859, do exhibit the substance of supernatural character, and I do hereby approve these apparitions as worthy of belief (although not obligatory) by the Christian faithful.”

Excerpt from Chrétiens Magazine #245 of December 2011