Our Lady of Champion

Adèle Brise was born on January 30, 1831, in Belgium, and emigrated to Wisconsin in 1855 with her family, settling in the dense woodland near what would become Champion in Brown County. In early October 1859, as she traveled through the forest alone, she encountered a woman clothed in dazzling white standing silently between two trees. Startled and uncertain, she said nothing and moved on.

On October 9, 1859, Adèle made the journey again, this time accompanied by her sister and a friend, Marie Theresa VanderMissen. The same figure appeared. Though her companions could not see the woman, they reported a surrounding brightness. A priest she consulted advised her to ask the figure's name and purpose if she appeared again.

She did, on the return trip that same day. This time the figure spoke. She identified herself as "the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners," and asked Adèle to do the same. She instructed Adèle to make a general confession and to offer Communion for sinners, warning that God's punishment would follow if people did not repent and do penance. She then gave a specific mission: "Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation — how to sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross, and how to approach the sacraments." Before departing she added: "Go and fear nothing. I will help you."

Adèle took the charge seriously. She spent years traveling the surrounding frontier on foot, catechizing children and families. By 1864, she and a circle of women companions had formed a Third Order Franciscan community, establishing a convent and school on the apparition site. Saint Mary's Boarding Academy formally opened in 1869, serving rural families throughout the region.

On the night of October 8–9, 1871, the Great Peshtigo Fire swept through northeastern Wisconsin — still the deadliest wildfire in American history, killing between 1,200 and 2,400 people and burning more than 1.2 million acres. As the firestorm bore down on the shrine, hundreds of terrified refugees gathered on the chapel grounds. Adèle organized an all-night rosary procession around the fence line. When morning came, the fire had stopped at the boundary. The grounds, buildings, and all those sheltered there were unharmed while the surrounding land lay in ash.

The apparitions went without formal Church judgment for more than 150 years. Bishop David L. Ricken of the Diocese of Green Bay opened an official investigation in January 2009. On December 8, 2010, he declared the apparitions of 1859 "worthy of belief," making Champion the site of the only approved Marian apparition in the United States. In December 2022, the Vatican's Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments confirmed an annual Solemnity under the title "Our Lady of Champion" on October 9. The shrine was formally renamed The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in April 2023.