Jan 5, 2026 / 17:02 pm
Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has issued an edict formally announcing a diocesan inquiry into the life of Servant of God Adele Brice, the 19th-century Belgian immigrant who received the only Church-approved Marian apparitions in the United States.
The edict, made on Dec. 28, 2025, during Mass on the feast of the Holy Family at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Green Bay, Wisconsin, invites the faithful to submit testimonies that could support her cause for beatification and canonization, including personal experiences, documents, or accounts of intercessions attributed to Brice.
The edict stems from a formal petition, or Supplex libellus, submitted on May 24, 2024, by Valentina Culurgioni, the appointed postulator for the cause, on behalf of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, the actor of the cause.
The apparitions of Our Lady
Adele Brice, born in Belgium in 1831, immigrated to Wisconsin with her family in 1855 and reported three apparitions of a lady dressed in white in 1859 near what is now Champion, Wisconsin.
Brice spoke about the apparitions to her parish priest, who instructed her to ask the lady if she saw her again: “In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?”
Brice fell on her knees and asked the lady the question the third time she appeared, and the lady identified herself as the “Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners” and told Brice to do the same.
The lady, who wore a flowing white garment with a yellow sash and whose head was surrounded with stars, told the young Belgian immigrant to “make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them.”
She also instructed Brice to “gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.”
In response to Brice’s question: “But how shall I teach them who know so little myself?” the lady responded: “Teach them their catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the cross, and how to approach the sacraments; that is what I wish you to do. Go and fear nothing, I will help you.”
Brice went on to dedicate her life to the mission, gathering other women to help her and establishing a schoolhouse and convent. The women endured hardship, traveling great distances in all types of weather and often facing uncertainty about how they would afford the food for their next meal.
Brice’s father built a chapel at the site of the apparitions, which eventually became a shrine to Our Lady of Good Help. The name was taken from the words the Blessed Mother said to Brice: “I will help you.”
In Oct. 8, 1871, the day before the 12-year anniversary of Our Lady’s final appearance to Brice on Oct. 9, 1859, the Great Peshtigo Fire, known as the most devastating fire in U.S. history, killed between 1,200 and 2,400 people and burned 1.2 million acres.
Brice and people from the countryside took shelter in the chapel, where they lifted a statue of Mary and processed through the sanctuary. In the morning, the area surrounding the shrine was devastated, yet the shrine’s grounds remained untouched.
Thousands of people still celebrate this miracle today on Oct. 8, where they participate in an all-night prayer through Oct. 9, the day of Our Lady’s final appearance to Brice.
(Story continues below)
In 2022, the Vatican gave its formal stamp of approval to the apparitions Brice witnessed, recognizing the newly named National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in Champion, Wisconsin, as an approved apparition site.
The cause for Brice’s canonization gained momentum in June 2024 when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops unanimously voted to advance it at the diocesan level during its spring assembly in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ricken, who has long championed the shrine, which attracts over 200,000 pilgrims annually, told CNA in 2024 that “the Blessed Mother is calling people to come to the shrine to experience the peace there, the simplicity; the basics of the Gospel, the catechism are exposed there.”
“She’s really current for now because we’re facing the same problems — people not knowing the faith, people having fallen away from the Church. She’s a model for us of what it means to be an evangelizing catechist. She’s very pertinent for today as well,” Ricken said in June 2024.
Testimonies must be either handwritten or digitally composed and printed, include a declaration of truthfulness, and bear a signature. The diocese stresses that unsigned or typed-only submissions will not be accepted as formal evidence.
This inquiry marks the first phase of the canonization process, potentially leading to Brice being declared “venerable” if her heroic virtues are confirmed.
Candidates for beatification and canonization normally require two miracles attributed to their intercession as well as evidence that they were holy and virtuous.
In 2024, Ricken told CNA about two possible miracles being investigated: a woman named Sharon said that while hospitalized for depression, she saw a vision of a woman she believed to be Brice, who gave her the will to live a joyful life of faith.
The second person to testify, a man named John, was diagnosed in 2018 with colorectal cancer, which had metastasized to his lungs. He received what he believes to be a miraculous cure after he prayed for Brice’s intercession.
“As of January 2022, I was declared with no evidence of disease, and I have been without cancer detected through my last scans all the way through April 2024,” Ricken quoted the man’s testimony.
Our Lady of Champion was the patroness of the Northern Marian Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. The pilgrimage stopped at the shrine on June 16, 2024, on its way to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.
Zelda Caldwell and Zoe Romanowsky contributed to this report.
