Pilgrimage Sites in Belgium

Belgium holds two Church-approved Marian apparition sites, and they occurred within months of each other. At Beauraing, the Virgin of the Golden Heart appeared thirty-three times to five children between 1932 and 1933. At Banneux, in the winter of 1933, Our Lady of the Poor appeared to Mariette Beco beside a spring that pilgrims now come to for healing. The two lie about an hour apart in the Walloon countryside.

The older devotion sits further north. Scherpenheuvel-Zichem is the most important Marian pilgrimage site in the country, built around the Basilica of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel. In Brussels, the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Koekelberg serves as Belgium's national sanctuary. At Moresnet-Chapelle, close to the point where Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands meet, Franciscans keep a shrine whose devotion began with a statue placed in an oak tree in 1679.