A Wisconsin saint's resting place

More about Sr. Adele Brise.

Good Help Shrine makes USA Today!

CHAMPION, Wis. – Philip and Barbara Hesselbein came to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to pray for a grandson who has an inoperable brain tumor.

Darlene Searcy prayed for her family and for herself; she has cancer.

Mary Spakowicz, who also has cancer, came "because God will hear me here."

The afflicted and the faithful have long made pilgrimages to the quiet country site where Belgian immigrant Adele Brise said in 1859 that she saw the Virgin Mary three times. For the past few years, maybe 30 or 50 people had trickled in daily to visit the chapel, Brise's grave and the candlelit crypt that marks the site of the apparition.

That changed in December, when Bishop David Ricken of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay certified after investigations by three theologians that Brise had indeed seen a beautiful lady in white who said she was the "queen of heaven."

That made the shrine, which is a mile from the unincorporated town of Champion, the USA's only official site where Mary is said to have appeared.

Now there's a steady flow of traffic into the recently enlarged gravel parking lot. Cars, vans and buses bring 500 people — and often many more — here daily. License plates from Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were spotted one recent weekday.

A new building houses much-needed restrooms.

A former boarding school on the site is being refurbished to house two priests recently assigned full time to the shrine.

"I knew that there would be some increase in interest" after he certified Brise's vision, Ricken says. "I wasn't sure how wide it would be, how broad it would be."

Our Lady of Good Help attracts far fewer visitors than international Marian shrines such as France's Lourdes, which draws 5 million a year, or Mexico's Our Lady of Guadalupe, which has double that.

Still, Ricken expects the number of visitors to continue to rise and says the diocese is trying to figure out how to accommodate them without losing "the simplicity of that beautiful shrine and the peace of the place."

continue at USA Today

I'm told USA Today has the second largest newspaper circulation in the U.S.

HT ED

NCRegister: Good news from Our Lady of Good Help Shrine

It was here, in 1859, when the Blessed Mother appeared three times to a young Belgium immigrant, Adele Brise. The message of the Blessed Mother to Adele was to “gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.”

The new rector of the shrine, Father Peter Stryker, hopes that message will continue to inspire pilgrims. Father Stryker and a fellow priest, both members of the Fathers of Mercy, a religious order of priests based in Kentucky, arrived in early July to take over the shrine’s daily operations at the request of Bishop Ricken.

“Both of us feel very welcomed and appreciated here,” said Father Stryker. “The holy traffic has indeed increased during these summer months. We feel honored to be serving at the first and thus far only site of Church-approved Marian apparitions here in the United States.”

Along with two new priests, the shrine has had to add new restrooms, expand the parking lot, and increase the corps of volunteers tenfold. Buses full of pilgrims from as far as Texas, Louisiana and Florida arrive regularly. This summer the shrine and bishop were featured on an ABC special about Marian apparitions.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/good-news-from-our-lady-of-good-help/#ixzz1UjEUXMyb

Photo

Fathers of Mercy arrive at Good Help Shrine

With record crowds descending upon the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, two religious order priests now assigned to the diocesan shrine are tending to the visitors' spiritual needs.

Fr. Peter Stryker and Fr. Jewel Aytona, members of the Fathers of Mercy religious congregation based in Auburn, Kent., arrived in Champion July 7 at the request of Bishop David Ricken.

Following the Dec. 8, 2010, declaration that the Marian apparitions to Adele Brise in 1859 were worthy of belief, Bishop Ricken began making plans to find a religious community of priests to staff the shrine. Bishop Ricken chose the Fathers of Mercy because their congregation's apostolate matches the shrine's historic mission: to preach and catechize, said Fr. John Doerfler, chancellor and vicar general of the diocese.

Bishop Ricken became acquainted with the Fathers of Mercy several years ago when he led a retreat for members of the congregation, added Fr. Doerfler. The congregation's superior general, Fr. David Wilton, met with Bishop Ricken earlier this year and agreed to send two priests to staff the shrine

continue at The Compass

Bp Ricken on Nightline feature "I think they did a beautiful job"

Less than 24 hours after a Brown County shrine was featured on national television, the man who declared it an official Marian apparition site is sharing his thoughts on the program.

Our Lady of Good Help was featured on a "Primetime Nightline" special. For the little shrine in the little community of Champion, the secret is out.

"I think they did a beautiful job on that," Green Bay Catholic Bishop David Ricken said of the way the shrine was featured.

"I think the solemnity of the shrine, its 150-year history, the simplicity of the message, the life of Adele Brice, how she lived out that mission the Blessed Mother gave to her, I think that came through in a very humble but striking way."

"I thought it'd be mostly in Wisconsin and the northern part of the country here, maybe neighboring states. I figured it'd take several years before people really heard about it or understood it, so I didn't dream of all this that's for sure," Bishop Ricken acknowledged.

The reality is, up to one thousand people a day are flocking to the shrine from around the country, praying for peace and healing.

"Some people ridicule it, but that's each person's choice. We're not forcing people to believe, of course; belief is a personal matter, but it needs to be listened to, and if something is there that attracts people, they need to pay attention to it because it may be a little invitation from God to get closer."

"We fill our lives with all kinds of things, much of which is really not that important, so going there to that shrine puts them in touch with God, who lives inside, and that deep longing for peace and unity with God that we were born with, we were created with."

To meet the needs of guests, the diocese has appointed two priests to serve full-time, as well as upgraded sidewalks and restroom facilities.  More parking space is next on the agenda.

The bishop also plans to explore the possibility of building a larger church and conference center and expanding the gift shop.

WBAY2

I have it recorded but haven't watched it yet.  The very beginning was... well, bad.  But they weren't talking about the Good Help Shrine yet at that point.