CV NEWS FEED // The Catholic Singles Conference is inviting the faithful who are looking for love to join the Walk to Mary, a 22-mile pilgrimage to the only Vatican-approved Marian apparition site in the United States.
The pilgrimage from Relevant Radio’s headquarters at the National Shrine of St. Joseph in De Pere, Wisconsin, to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin, began in 2013. This year it will take place May 3.
Father Francis Hoffman, known as Fr. Rocky, who is also the director of Relevant Radio, shared his idea for the pilgrimage on the station in 2011. A fellow Wisconsinite and Marian devotee, Tom Schmit, felt that the Holy Spirit was calling him to help organize the pilgrimage. He worked alongside Pat Deprey, another Wisconsin Catholic who knows Fr. Rocky, to make the vision a reality.
The Catholic Singles Conference is inviting faithful who are 18 and older to attend, offering gatherings and meals for singles. They note that the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion is a Jubilee Pilgrimage site for 2025, and thus attendees have the opportunity to gain a plenary indulgence.
The shrine itself honors the apparition of Our Lady to Belgian immigrant Adele Brise in 1859. Brise had promised to God to become a religious sister and teacher in Belgium, but when her parents decided to move to the United States, her confessor told her to be obedient to her parents. If God desired for her to teach, the confessor said, He would provide a way in America.
While living with her family in the United States, Brise twice saw a beautiful woman in the woods before she stopped to speak to her on her way home from Sunday Mass with two companions. The Shrine’s website describes the apparition as a woman bathed in heavenly light, dressed in white with a yellow sash, golden hair, and a crown of stars around her head. However, only Brise could see her.
“In God’s name, who are you, and what do you want of me?” Brise asked on her knees.
“I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same,” the Lady said. “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 Lady instructed Brise to teach the local children, and when Brise, who was illiterate, asked what she could teach them, the Blessed Mother replied, “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.”
After the vision, Brise went house to house, asking parents if she could teach their children about the faith. Eventually she and some companions founded a convent, school, and wooden chapel. In the Great Peshtigo Fire in 1871, the deadliest fires in American history, the school, convent, and chapel were miraculously left unscathed.
In 2009, Green Bay Bishop David L. Ricken opened a formal investigation of the apparition, and in 2010 declared the apparitions “worthy of belief” through the authority of the Catholic Church.
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