On October 9 the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, northeast of Green Bay in Wisconsin, keeps the Solemnity of Our Lady of Champion. The date is the anniversary of the second and third apparitions to Adele Brise in 1859. Walking home from Sunday Mass that afternoon, the young Belgian immigrant heard the Lady speak: "I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners. Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation." Adele spent the rest of her life doing exactly that, walking the farms of the frontier to teach the faith.
In 2010 Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay declared the apparitions worthy of belief, the first Church-approved Marian apparition in the United States. The Holy See's Dicastery for Divine Worship later approved the shrine's own solemnity on October 9, first celebrated in 2023, the year the shrine took the title Our Lady of Champion in place of Our Lady of Good Help. The day centres on the Solemnity Mass and a Eucharistic Rosary procession on the grounds where the Queen of Heaven appeared.
Adele Brise is buried beside the Apparition Chapel at Champion, and her cause for canonization was opened in January 2026. Pilgrims pray at her grave and in the crypt beneath the chapel, where the place of the apparitions is marked.
