I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners

A year after the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in Lourdes (France, 1858), she appeared on three different days in the small town of Champion, Wisconsin, near the Great Lakes. More than 150 years separate these apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church’s official approval.

In early October 1859, a 28-year-old woman named Adele Brise walked alone in the Wisconsin woods, headed for a nearby grist mill with a sack of wheat on her shoulder, when she saw a woman dressed in a luminous white dress standing among the trees.

… After two silent apparitions, on the walk back home after Mass, the woman in white appeared again. She had blonde hair, and a circle of stars surrounded her head. This time, Adele fell to her knees and asked her who she was and what she wanted.

“I am the Queen of Heaven,” the woman said, “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 woman continued, “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.”

Adele immediately shared what had happened with her family. She also quickly took up the task entrusted to her by Mary. In the months and years that followed, Adele walked from village to village and home to home, over a 50-mile radius. She offered to do housework in people’s homes in exchange for the opportunity to catechize their children. A chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Good Help was built on the site of the apparitions.

Eventually, encouraged by the local priest, Adele gathered companions to share in the work. They formed a group of lay Third Order Franciscans. Though they took no formal vows, they wore the Franciscan habit. In the 1860s, they started a school, St Mary’s Boarding Academy, near the chapel.

Over the decades, the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help became a familiar part of life in the Champion area. It was, and remains, a place of great peace, pilgrimage and even healing. The current chapel includes many crutches left behind as examples of many illnesses and diseases that have been cured following visits by pilgrims.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help is now the only Marian shrine in the United States on the site of approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Sources: Our Lady of Good Help

Order of Malta