In 1938 the Rev. Matthew Herttna, Catholic chaplain at the Massillon State Hospital, built a shrine on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital where he worked, so that priests would have somewhere to say Mass for the patients in his care. He dedicated it to St. Dymphna. Her story, set in seventh-century Ireland, has a girl of fifteen fleeing a father whose reason broke after his wife's death and who then demanded to marry his daughter. She was overtaken at Geel, in what is now Belgium, and beheaded there; the devotion that gathered around her tomb became bound up with the care of the mentally ill.
The shrine left the hospital grounds in 2012 for St. Mary Catholic Church, a sandstone church on Cherry Road NE, a few streets north of downtown Massillon. In August 2015 a fire tore through the chapel that held it, and the statue of the saint was destroyed. The chapel was rebuilt, and the first Mass in the restored church was celebrated on Christmas Eve of 2016.
A first-class relic of St. Dymphna is kept in the shrine chapel for veneration, beneath a tall statue of her ringed by vigil lights. Windows salvaged from the 1938 building were set into the back of St. Mary's during the reconstruction. There is no apparition here and no miraculous spring. The pilgrimage rests on a patronage — depression, anxiety, dementia, illness of the mind and the nerves — and on a relic pilgrims can stand before.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
The parish is a century older than the shrine. German and Irish settlers founded St. Mary's in 1839 under the name Neue Katholische Mutter Gottes Kirche, and finished a first church in 1842. The cornerstone of the present building was laid in September 1876, to a design by the Dayton architect Leon Beaver, assisted by a Massillon resident named John Verment. Accounts of the finish date differ: the parish's own history gives 1880, with the dedication by Bishop Ignatius F. Horstmann on August 21, 1892, while other records give 1876 as the year of completion. The church was consecrated in 1926. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, a listing that recognizes the architecture of the building rather than the shrine it would later house.
Six counties were detached from the Diocese of Cleveland in 1943 to form the Diocese of Youngstown, which took in Massillon. Through those decades the Dymphna shrine sat elsewhere in the city, a freestanding building on the grounds of the Massillon State Hospital — a site that now operates as Heartland Behavioral Healthcare. In 2012 the shrine was relocated into St. Mary Catholic Church.
The fire came on August 4, 2015. It gutted the chapel housing the shrine and the parish baptistry, and the statue of St. Dymphna was lost. The cause was reported inconsistently and never settled. St. Paul's Lutheran Church next door lent its facilities for services while the work went on. Restoration ran some sixteen months. The shrine installation in the rebuilt church was the gift of William and Patricia Crookston, donated in 2017 and designed by the parish's pastor, the Rev. Edward Gretchko.
St. Mary's merged with St. Barbara and St. Joseph in 2023 to form Divine Mercy Parish, a consolidation the Diocese of Youngstown announced in 2022 for want of priests. The National Association of Shrine and Pilgrimage Apostolate lists the shrine among the national shrines of the United States, a standing its page attributes to designation by the U.S. bishops' conference; no decree or date of designation is published for Massillon. The League of St. Dymphna, run from the shrine, enrolls members in its novenas for the mentally ill and those who care for them.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Massillon
National Shrine of St. Dymphna
The shrine occupies a chapel inside St. Mary Catholic Church, a sandstone Gothic Revival building on a Latin-cross plan, with twin towers on the facade and a rose window above three portals. A tall statue of St. Dymphna stands in the chapel among vigil lights, and a first-class relic of the saint is set out for veneration. Stained glass rescued from the freestanding 1938 shrine was reinstalled at the back of the church after the reconstruction. A gift shop on the premises sells statues, medals, chaplets and prayer cards of the saint.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of St. Dymphna — May 15
St. Dymphna's feast falls on May 15, a fixed date, and it is the feast the shrine's annual gathering is named for. Devotion at Massillon is directed to those who carry mental and emotional illness, and to the families who carry it with them.
Annual Feast Day and Anniversary Celebration — a Sunday in May
The shrine's principal gathering merges St. Dymphna's feast with the anniversary of its own founding in 1938. The parish sets the date within May, and it has moved from year to year — take the current year's date from the shrine itself. Veneration of the first-class relic and a novena precede a Mass, and a reception in the parish school gymnasium follows it.
🛏️ Where to Stay
Hampton Inn Massillon ⭐⭐⭐ — The closest lodging to the shrine, 0.8 km away in downtown Massillon and within walking distance of the Massillon Museum. Organizers of pilgrimages to St. Dymphna hold a group room block here. Hot breakfast and free parking. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
The Bertram Inn at Glenmoor (boutique hotel) — A 1930s Gothic-style building on the Glenmoor golf course grounds in Canton, 6.5 km from the shrine, for pilgrims who want something other than a chain hotel. Reserve this hotel
SpringHill Suites by Marriott Canton ⭐⭐⭐ — An all-suite hotel in North Canton, 10.4 km from the shrine and close to Akron-Canton Airport. Useful when the two nearer properties are full. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) is the nearest commercial airport, 14 km northeast of the church. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE), 73 km north, carries far more routes. Both figures are straight-line distances, and a car is needed from either.
By Train: No passenger rail reaches Massillon. The nearest Amtrak station is in Cleveland, 80 km north in a straight line.
By Bus: The Stark Area Regional Transit Authority (SARTA) runs fixed routes within Massillon and links the city with Canton, Akron and Akron-Canton Airport.
By Car: The shrine's own directions place Massillon just off Route 21, about 55 miles (90 km) south of Cleveland and 120 miles (190 km) north of Columbus.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Tommy Tighe. St. Dymphna's Playbook: A Catholic Guide to Finding Mental and Emotional Well-Being — A practical Catholic guide to mental and emotional health built around St. Dymphna's patronage, the devotion this shrine exists for. (Ave Maria Press, 2023)
Marion Amberg. Mary's Miracles: A Traveler's Guide to Catholic America — A traveler's survey of Marian shrines across the United States; context for the wider American shrine map rather than for Massillon itself.
🎥 Recommended Videos
Ash Wednesday | The National Shrine of Saint Dymphna - The Church of Saint Mary, Massillon, Ohio — A full liturgy filmed inside the shrine church, and the closest thing available to a walk-through of the interior. Pax Aeterna.
Massillon church damaged in fire set to reopen Christmas Eve — Local television coverage of the 2015 fire and the reopening of the church in December 2016. News 5 Cleveland.
🔗 Useful Links
National Shrine of St. Dymphna — The shrine's official site, with visitor information, the novena booklet and the League of St. Dymphna.
Divine Mercy Parish, Massillon — Diocese of Youngstown — The diocesan page for the parish that hosts the shrine.
National Shrines of the United States — The National Association of Shrine and Pilgrimage Apostolate's list, where Massillon appears under Ohio.
GCatholic — St. Mary Church, Massillon — Canonical database record, noting the 2012 relocation of the shrine.
St. Mary's Catholic Church (Massillon, Ohio) — Wikipedia — Architecture, the National Register listing and the 2015 fire.
Stark Area Regional Transit Authority — Bus routes serving Massillon, Canton and Akron-Canton Airport.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Steubenville (90 km) — Franciscan University's hilltop campus above the Ohio River, a Vatican-designated plenary indulgence site.
Pittsburgh (135 km) — Fr. Suitbert Mollinger's chapel on Troy Hill, where more than 5,000 relics line the walls in some 800 walnut cases.
Carey (158 km) — Ohio's Marian national shrine, the Basilica of Our Lady of Consolation, built around a replica statue carried from Frenchtown in 1875.
Detroit (212 km) — A French colonial basilica founded in 1701, a Victorian Gothic shrine, and the tomb of Blessed Solanus Casey.
Royal Oak (234 km) — The Art Deco basilica devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, guarded by a cross the Ku Klux Klan could not burn.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"Depressive illness can be a way to discover other aspects of oneself and new forms of encounter with God."
— Pope St. John Paul II, Address on Depression, 14 November 2003
