National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help

Shrine and school

The original chapel was a 10 foot by 12 foot wooden structure built by Lambert Brise, the father of Adele Brise, at the site of the Marian apparition.[8] Mrs. Isabella Doyen donated the 5 acres (20,000 m²) surrounding the spot, and a larger (24 foot by 40 foot) wooden church was built in 1861.[8] This chapel bore the inscription "Notre Dame de bon Secours, priez pour nous", giving the shrine its present name.[9] The site became a popular place of pilgrimage and the chapel was soon too small to accommodate the pilgrims who were coming. A larger brick chapel was built in 1880, and dedicated by Bishop Francis Xavier Krautbauer, the second bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. A school and a convent were also built on the site in the 1880s.[8]

Lumber companies and sawmills had been harvesting the woods of Wisconsin, leaving piles of sawdust and branches as they produced lumber and wood products. The night of October 8, 1871, a firestorm began near Peshtigo, Wisconsin that spread through the woods and towns, consuming everything in its path.[10] Unable to outrun the flames, nearly 2,000 people died in the inferno. Some people assume that, driven by strong winds, the conflagration leaped across Green Bay of Lake Michigan and began burning huge sections of the Door Peninsula. When the firestorm – of whatever origin – threatened the Chapel, Adele Brise refused to leave and instead organized a procession to beg the Virgin Mary for her protection.[5] The surrounding land was destroyed by the fire but the chapel and its grounds, together with all the people who had taken refuge there, survived the fire unharmed.[11] The conflagration engulfed about 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) and is the worst recorded fire disaster in US history.

The current building at the shrine was built in 1942, with support from Bishop Paul Peter Rhode, who dedicated the new building in July 1942.[9] It is a Tudor Gothic style building which accommodates approximately 300 people in an upper Apparition Chapel with a small Apparition Oratory for prayer on the lower level. The Apparition Oratory also contains a collection of crutches left behind in thanksgiving by people who came to pray at the shrine. The grounds of the shrine have an outdoor area for a Rosary walk and Stations of the Cross.

The largest annual gathering at the Chapel happens on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on August 15, celebrated with an outdoor Mass and a procession around the grounds of the shrine.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help gained national recognition when the apparitions were approved, after a two-year investigation, by Bishop David Ricken on December 8, 2010, making it the first and only apparition approved by the Catholic Church in the United States.[12] Bishop Ricken noted that his predecessors had implicitly endorsed the shrine by holding services there over the years.[4]

On August 15, 2016, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops designated the shrine as a National Shrine.[13] In recognition of this, the shrine's name was changed to The National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help.[13]