The Shrine Untouched by Flames
by Edward Anthony Dundon
On 30 January 2026, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Champion, Wisconsin, invited submissions from anyone with helpful information to support Adele Brice’s cause for sainthood. This marked the first step in the canonisation process of the visionary Adele Brice, who had encountered Our Lady in Champion in 1859.
In 2022, the Vatican recognised the apparition of the Blessed Virgin in Wisconsin – the only site in the United States to receive the distinguished honour of a Marian apparition. A year later, the shrine was renamed the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion.
In 2016, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) designated the grounds of the shrine as a national shrine.
The USCCB also examined historical information and testimonies concerning Our Lady’s apparitions of 1859. Among the records were Our Lady’s instructions to Adele to teach the children their catechism, the shrine’s miraculous survival in 1871 of The Great Fire of Peshtigo, and documented healings consistent with Catholic doctrine.
Adele Brice was born on 30 January 1831, in the province of Brabant, Belgium. She was pious and cheerful, despite being blind in one eye after a childhood accident. As a young girl, Adele had hoped to become a religious teaching sister in Belgium, but her parents chose to settle in the United States.
When Adele was twenty-four, her family and other Belgian settlers arrived in Wisconsin. The settlers managed to forge a good life there, but they found the harsh American winters difficult to withstand.
One day, while walking in the woods, Adele saw a lady dressed in white standing between two trees. The woman remained silent. Adele wondered what this unusual interaction signified. When she told her family about it, they pondered if it might have been a soul in purgatory visiting earth and seeking help through prayers.
In October 1859, shortly after the previous apparition, Adele was on her way to Mass with her sister and a friend. The church was ten miles away, but she walked there every week regardless of the weather. En route, she saw the same lady in white standing in precisely the same spot.
On that same day, Adele shared this experience with her parish priest. He told her that if the lady appeared again, to ask: ‘In God’s name, who are you and what do you want from me?’
When Adele and her friends were returning home that day, she saw the lady for the third time. As they approached the hallowed place, Adele noticed that the lady was dressed in the same white cloak with a yellow sash around her waist. She wore a crown on her head. Her wavy, golden hair fell over her shoulders. Adele couldn’t look at the lady’s face because of the intense light surrounding her.
This time of meeting her, Adele fell to her knees and asked the lady what her parish priest had told her to ask.
This was her reply: ‘I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish for you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is good. However, you must do more. Make a general confession and receive Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be compelled to punish them.’
‘Adele, why can’t we see her as you do?’ one of her friends asked.
‘The lady claims she is the Queen of Heaven,’ Adele said.
‘Blessed are those who believe without seeing.’
‘What more do you want me to do, dear Lady?’
‘Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they need to know for salvation,’ came the reply.
‘But how can I teach them when I know so little myself?’
‘Teach them their catechism. How to make the Sign of the Cross and how to approach the sacraments. That is what I want you to do. Go and fear nothing. I will help you.’
Then Our Lady, with her hands raised, seemed to bless those at her feet. When Adele looked up, she had disappeared.
After this encounter, Adele now began her mission of teaching children their catechism and about the sacraments. She told everyone, including her father about her encounter with Our Lady. Adele’s father regarded his daughter as truthful. To show his love for Our Lady, he built a small chapel at the apparition site. In 1861, a larger wooden chapel was built as by then it had to accommodate a hundred people.
For many years, Adele taught by herself. But by 1864, she had gathered a group of women to assist her with the teaching mission. They called the group the Sisters of Good Help, a Third-Order Franciscan community that was never consecrated. Then Adele received substantial financial support from parishioners to build a school and convent. So in 1867 she opened a school near the chapel.
Adele’s mission could sometimes be problematic. There were days when she and her helpers had barely enough to eat. On such occasions, the community would gather in the chapel to ask for Our Blessed Mother’s help. To their amazement, a bag of flour or a consignment of meat would soon arrive at the convent.
On 8 October 1871, gale-force winds turned the woods and forests of Wisconsin into a huge inferno. The Great Fire of Peshtigo became known as one of the most devastating fires in US history. Father Anthony Stephens, rector of the shrine, describes the inferno as ‘like the Battle of Jericho.’
People from nearby areas rushed to the chapel where the community was praying. Those present walked around the perimeter of the chapel, praying the Rosary, singing hymns and beseeching the intercession of Jesus and His Most Holy Mother for help. The procession went on throughout the night.
In the early hours of the next morning, the winds abated and a downpour of fire-quenching rain helped extinguish the flames before they reached the chapel, sparing both the chapel and the school. Between one and two thousand lives were lost, and more than a million acres of land were destroyed.
A local priest, Father Peter Pernin, declared that the prayers to the Mother of God were heard and the fire was extinguished. As dawn broke, the ravages of the conflagration were revealed. To borrow Father Pernin’s words: ‘Everything was destroyed: miles of desolation everywhere. But the convent, school, and chapel on the holy land consecrated to the Virgin Mary shone like an emerald isle in a sea of ashes. Tongues of fire had reached the chapel fence. . . the fire had not entered the chapel grounds.’
The fire destroyed the areas around the grounds. Only the cattle led by the farmers to the chapel survived. Because of the drought of that summer, many wells in the area had run very dry, but the chapel’s well – only a few feet deep – supplied enough water for the cattle to survive. No one could explain how such a shallow well could meet the needs of such requirements. This event is often called the Miracle of the Chapel Well.
However, many other miracles have also been associated with the shrine. There was the case of a seventeen-year-old boy who developed pleurisy as a result of pneumonia. Although he had breathing difficulties and was very weak, he completed a novena at the chapel and was cured despite his damaged lungs.
Another miracle we know about happened to a young girl who had bleeding sores who had been treated by multiple doctors for many years. She, too, was completely cured when she made a pilgrimage at the chapel with her mother.
Having lost her sight after contracting measles, a young girl went to the chapel to pray with her mother. She was also cured.
For many years after the conflagration, Adele and the sisters of her community continued teaching and catechising. Adele passed away in July 1896. She pursued her ministry with a great eagerness and a desire to fulfil her dedication to God and His Blessed Mother. She is buried in the cemetery near the Apparition Chapel.
In October 1902, Bishop Messmer assigned the chapel duties to the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Holy Cross. Sister LaPlante served as superior for twenty-four years.
The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion continues to be a source of both corporal and spiritual healings.
Pilgrims are always reminded of Our Lady’s unfailing words to Adele: ‘Go and fear nothing. I will help you.’
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Anthony Edward Dundon is a writer, editor on topics of religion and spirituality. In the past fifteen years, his work has been published in The Mass of Ages, The Latin Mass, Catholic Insight, The Majellan and Intercom. He lives in London, UK.