‘Go and Fear Nothing’: Our Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Champion
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After the death of her husband, a Colorado woman carried forward his dream of visiting the Wisconsin shrine — and discovered unexpected healing along the way.
By Marianne Arling
I first read about the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion in 2012. My husband, the late Deacon David Arling, and I were immediately interested in going there.
We had a special connection to Bishop David Ricken, who had lived in Pueblo for many years before becoming bishop of Green Bay, Wisconsin. My husband and I raised three children there before moving to Broomfield, where Deacon David served at Nativity of Our Lord Parish. We knew that he had a great devotion to the Blessed Mother.
Bishop Ricken would eventually approve the Marian apparitions at Champion as worthy of belief, making them the only approved Marian apparitions in the United States. I once asked him why he thought Our Lady wanted to draw attention to these apparitions 150 years later, and he said, “Because we need her so much now.”
Our Lady’s Mission to Adele
The Blessed Mother appeared in 1859 to Adele Brice, a Belgian Catholic immigrant, telling her to “go out and teach the children in this wild country.” With few priests available to serve Catholic immigrants at the time, families were losing their faith.
Adele responded by traveling throughout the area, teaching children and their parents about the faith and the sacraments. Eventually, a chapel and school were built at the site of the apparitions. The shrine also became associated with healing and gained national attention following the Peshtigo Fire of 1871, the deadliest fire in U.S. history. As the fire devastated the surrounding Wisconsin countryside, people gathered at the Shrine and prayed for protection. The fire stopped at its fence as rain began to fall.
My husband wanted to take our parishioners there. He never had the opportunity.
“Go and fear nothing”
David passed away on January 1, 2024. He had prayed that one day he would pass on one of Our Lady’s feast days, and she came for him on the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.
Before his passing, we had already recruited a group interested in visiting the Shrine. After David died, the Holy Spirit prompted me to organize the pilgrimage in his memory.
Bishop Ricken encouraged me. I was nervous, but somehow I received the help that I needed, and 34 people signed up.
Our Lady had said to Adele, “Go and fear nothing — I will help you.” And I believe that she helped me.
That first pilgrimage became two more, and we have now traveled to the Shrine three times, thanks to the help of my daughter, Lisa Cadwallader, and Father Joseph Hartmann.
Healing, Peace and Deeper Faith
I believe it was Our Lady’s call to make these pilgrimages, and our pilgrims have shared many of the blessings they have received.
For me, Our Lady has helped with the grief of my husband’s passing. At the Shrine, I was drawn to the Pietà, realizing that she lost both her husband, St. Joseph, and her only son, Jesus.
I also had a serious neuropathy problem in my hand and could not close my fist. At the consecration of Mass there, I had an impulse to press my fist closed with my other hand, and it closed in prayer — and has closed normally ever since.
Another woman who had been unable to kneel was able to kneel at Mass at the Shrine and has continued to do so since. Others have reported successful surgeries, healing from longstanding painful conditions such as neuropathic foot pain and emotional healing after the pilgrimages.
Pilgrims have also described a new sense of closeness to the Blessed Mother and a stronger prayer life, including praying the Rosary more often and with deeper meaning.
Ginger Haney experienced that spiritual fruit through the relationships formed among the pilgrims.
“Not only is the Blessed Mother beckoning us to draw closer to her and her Son, but you also discover new bonds with, and encouragement from, your fellow travelers ... new holy friendships!” she said. “This pilgrimage convinced me to be bold and evangelical in talking to others about a relationship with Christ’s mother and greatest disciple — and to encourage them to visit this holy Shrine!”
My daughter Lisa described finding something else at Champion: peace.
“It is so challenging to find a sense of peace in today’s world, but at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, there is a heavenly peace that is of God, a peace that surpasses all understanding,” she shared. “In that peace, a person is able to feel their faith in such a strong way that it can carry them through whatever stresses they are going through at home.”
For Father Hartmann, these trips are not only pilgrimages, but “callings” from the Blessed Mother.
“I was blessed for the third time to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion. We fellow pilgrims often speak of such visits as ‘pilgrimages’ — and they are,” he said. “But I find that to those open to the movements of the Holy Spirit, they are also ‘callings’ by our Blessed Mother, to make a long ‘journey’ and allow her graces to touch, and teach, and encourage us to go ‘deeper’ in love and devotion to her Son, and his Church, as she did with Adele Brice in 1859.
“It is a life-long, day-by-day ‘journey’ in being open and allowing her Son and his Blessed Mother to make of us a beautiful and wonderful difference in helping to catechize the world, and bring us closer to one another in the Lord,” Father Hartmann concluded.
For more information about the Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, visit championshrine.org.
