Cornfields and soaring grain silos line the Minnesota Catholics ' approach to the Shrine of Our Woman of Good Help. The hint of fertilizer wafts from close by dairy farms.
But the car park where the motor coach stops is newly graveled, and plans to grow beyond the shrine's little brick church and gift shop are in progress. Because like this group from Hastings, travellers are coming.
It's here at this modest shrine in the center of Wisconsin farm country, where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared more than 150 years ago. 8 months ago, the bishop in close by Green Bay officially validated the apparitions, making the shrine the 1st such holy site in the country and one of only 12 or so in the world.
Since then, regular visitors to the site have grown from about a hundred a year to about a thousand a week. The Hastings group numbers nineteen.
For the Minnesota pilgrims, a miracle isn't the aim of their two-day trip, though they'd welcome one. It's mostly about seeking a closer connection to the Almighty through the ma of Christ.
"It's like heaven touching earth," recounted Joanne Knoll, "It is extraordinarily moving, to understand she was there."
A wait of 150 years
Early morning sunlight filtered thru the clouds at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Hastings last month as the pilgrims readied themselves for the just about 300-mile journey.
Of the church's nearly 10,000 members, several have gone on other pilgrimages to places where the Virgin Mary is thought to have appeared : Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal and Medjugorje in Yugoslavia.
Joanne and Jerry Knoll have led visits to Medjugorje where you can find a good Medjugorje accommodation, and Jerry is a driver for a motor coach company, so it was natural that they might come up with the idea of this pilgrimage.
"It's exciting for me because I can get out of this day to day monotony and go over there and relax and pray and not need to stress about anything else," said Jerry, 61.
As Jerry Knoll led the bus east, somebody hit "Play" and a DVD informed the story of the shrine.
In 1855, a pious young lady by the name of Adele Brise left her native Belgium and settled on the Green Bay spur with her family. In October 1859, she was twenty-eight and on her way to a grist mill when she saw a woman clothed all in white standing between 2 trees. She froze and watched till the vision slowly vanished. The following Sunday, the lady in white appeared again to Adele in the same place while she was on her way to mass.
She saw the figure once more. This time the lady identified herself as the "Queen of Heaven" and implored Brise to teach kids about their Catholic religion. Brise gave her life to that mission. Initially, she traveled the cape on foot, going from home to home to teach youngsters. She was finally joined by other young women who later helped her found a church, priory and school close to the location of the apparitions.
Drawn by reports of cures, conversions and other signs of a divine presence at the shrine, thousands of faithful have paid a visit to the site. Bishops have said mass there. Nevertheless it wasn't till the length of Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, in Jan 2009, that the church opened an inquiry into the apparitions.
While there have been many reported sightings of Mary, the Catholic church is wary of fabrications and seldom investigates. The Vatican leaves analyses up to local bishops.
Bishop Ricken designated Marian students who studied Brise's correspondence and other supporting paperwork. They looked into the reliability of her character and the history of devotion at the shrine.
On Dec. Eight, 2010, Ricken validated the apparitions, declaring they "exhibit the substance of supernatural character" and are "worthy of belief."
Our Woman of Good Help became an official Marian apparition site.
The shrine waves
The 8-acre shrine property isn't in the league of more well known Marian shrines : Our Woman of Guadalupe, in Mexico, with its 20,000,000 visitors a year, or Lourdes, with its healing spring water as reported tagza.com.
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