Adele Brise’s reported encounters with the Virgin Mary gave rise to a teaching mission and a place of pilgrimage in Wisconsin’s Belgian settlement country. The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion preserves that tradition, associated with October 1859, and with the survival of its earlier chapel during the fires of 1871. A formal Church declaration followed in December 2010. These are connected parts of one case, but they rest on different kinds of evidence: recollected visions, an early devotional narrative, the history of a school and shrine, and a much later ecclesiastical assessment.
One particularly revealing source is the appendix to Peter Pernin’s The Finger of God Is There!, published in Montreal in 1874. It describes Brise, the mission and the fire, yet closes by declining to pronounce either a miracle or a judgment on the apparition. Reading that qualification alongside the actual 2010 declaration gives a more informative history than simply calling the site approved or miraculous.
The Belgian settlement setting
The Belgian Heritage Center places the shrine within a wider migration beginning in the 1850s. Families established communities around Green Bay, clearing woodland and developing farms and local businesses. Names such as Brussels, Rosiere, Walhain and Champion recalled their homeland. Religious practice was one part of a larger network of family, language and community life.
In Pernin’s 1874 account, the absence of a resident priest meant long journeys to a neighbouring parish. He described Brise walking to Mass and returning through the woods. His portrayal of the settlers’ educational needs was that of a Catholic missionary, interested particularly in religious instruction. It should not be adopted as a neutral verdict on the intelligence or abilities of an entire immigrant community.
What the shrine now recounts
The shrine’s current narrative describes three encounters. The first was silent, with a woman in white appearing between two trees. The second occurred while Brise was travelling to Mass with companions; the third followed on the return journey, traditionally associated with 9 October 1859. Only Brise was said to see the figure. The reported message directed her towards prayer and teaching children their catechism and sacramental practices.
The shrine explains that Brise did not write down her own experiences. Its account combines oral history, material from people close to her, historical documents and second- and third-hand reports in its archives. It acknowledges variation among them. The polished dialogue on a modern webpage should consequently be read as the shrine’s reconstruction of a tradition, rather than an autograph diary or a recording made during an encounter.
Pernin’s three Sunday journeys
Pernin provides an earlier printed version. In the English edition of his 1874 book, he calls the visionary Adele Brisse, one of the spellings found in the historical record. He situates the events vaguely ten or twelve years earlier, rather than supplying a precise calendar date. The first encounter occurs on a return from Mass. Brise kneels, prays and rises, while her companions notice her emotion without being described as seeing the woman themselves.
His sequence then moves to the following week. Brise again attends religious services and sees the figure at the same place on her return. News of the incident provokes different responses: curiosity, laughter and disbelief. A larger party decides to accompany her on the next Sunday. In this third encounter she addresses the figure and receives the instruction that becomes the basis of her mission.
That sequence differs from the shrine’s present arrangement of encounters over a few days. The contrast should remain visible. It is not necessary to force the accounts into agreement, or to invent a definite explanation for their differences. Pernin’s approximate dating likewise cannot serve as independent confirmation of the precise modern anniversary. It establishes that a developed account was in print during Brise’s lifetime, while leaving questions about the transmission of particular details.
The conversation Pernin chose to preserve
Pernin explicitly says that he is giving only the portion of a longer conversation needed for his subject. In his version, Brise asks what the woman wants. The answer concerns children who receive Communion without sufficient knowledge of their religion. Brise is to instruct them and especially prepare them for their first Communion. When she objects that she lacks learning herself, the figure reassures her of assistance.
This is a selected devotional dialogue, presented by Pernin as part of a religious narrative. Its teaching emphasis is clear without treating every sentence as a verbatim transcript. The reported encounters are also not multiple independent sightings merely because companions accompanied Brise. In Pernin’s telling, the companions witness her behaviour and react to the reports; the vision remains hers.
A mission taking institutional form
The appendix follows Brise travelling between villages in difficult weather to assemble and teach children. Pernin describes persistence despite fatigue and ridicule. A priest eventually advises her to raise funds for a schoolhouse so that children can gather in one place. By the time of his account, he describes a school accommodating more than a hundred children, a small wooden chapel and a group of young women assisting the work.
He also gives material details of the developing pilgrimage site: an enclosure of about six acres, a wooden fence, a surrounding path and periodic processions. A tree associated with the reported apparition was preserved as a devotional object. These details help explain how an individual’s account acquired a lasting public setting through buildings, teaching, shared observances and the work of other people.
The existence and influence of that activity are separate historical questions from the supernatural identity of the figure. Pernin valued them together, but readers can distinguish the reported experience from the institution and practices that grew around it.
The fire narrative belongs to another place
Pernin survived the 1871 catastrophe at Peshtigo. The title of his book advertises an eyewitness account, yet the appendix itself distinguishes the chapel episode from the events he experienced personally. It describes a similar storm of wind and fire across the waters of Green Bay. His presence at Peshtigo should not be transferred to Brise’s chapel or to the much earlier apparitions.
In his account of 8 October 1871, Brise’s companions take a statue into a prayerful procession around the sanctuary. Wind and flame sometimes prevent further progress; they wait or turn in another direction. Morning reveals widespread destruction nearby, while the school, chapel and their enclosure survive. Pernin describes charring on the fence and contrasts the protected ground with the burned surroundings.
That is an early account of the tradition of preservation. It is not a modern reconstruction of fire behaviour, and this case does not supply a physical mechanism that Pernin did not investigate. Nor does survival by itself identify a supernatural cause. What the passage securely establishes is how a sympathetic Catholic writer presented the chapel’s protection only a few years after the disaster.
His reservation and the later declaration
At the end of the appendix, Pernin carefully limits his claim. He does not intend to pronounce the preservation a miracle, just as he declines to give that designation to the survival of his own tabernacle at Peshtigo. He also states that ecclesiastical authority has not yet spoken on the apparition and that he will not anticipate its judgment. His religious confidence and his reservation coexist on the same page.
On 8 December 2010, Bishop David L. Ricken issued the Diocese of Green Bay’s declaration on the 1859 apparitions. The document says three Marian experts examined the history and surviving material, including objections about the evidence. It acknowledges that early documents are scarce. The assessment weighs the accounts’ consistency with Catholic teaching, Brise’s character, her commitment and the continuing religious life associated with the site.
The final decision approves the apparitions as “worthy of belief”, while expressly making belief non-obligatory for the Christian faithful. The decree also says that none of the reported healing favours had then been officially declared a miracle by the Church. Those statements describe the 2010 decision; they should not be expanded into an undated claim about every later healing report. This is an ecclesiastical judgment, not a clinical study or a scientific demonstration of the visions.
The building in the photograph
The shrine identifies the present Apparition Chapel as its fourth chapel, constructed in 1942. It distinguishes that building from the small structure erected by Brise’s father in 1859, the larger wooden chapel of 1861 and the first brick chapel of 1880. Consequently, the photograph taken by Royalbroil in September 2010 is modern site context. It does not show the original apparition setting as it looked in 1859, or the wooden building described in the fire narrative.
The case brings those successive histories together without treating them as interchangeable evidence. Brise’s reported visions, Pernin’s selected account, the educational mission, the preservation tradition and the later Church decision each contribute something specific. Their differences make the source trail worth following.
Sources and related reading
The principal early source is Peter Pernin, The Finger of God Is There! (Montreal: John Lovell, 1874), appendix, printed pages 94–102. The original English edition was checked in a digitised microfilm copy originating from the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, made available through Canadiana and the University of Alberta Libraries. Pernin’s entire fire memoir has not been used as if every part were a firsthand account of the shrine.
For the later assessment, read the complete Diocese of Green Bay declaration of 8 December 2010, including its signed concluding page. The National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion’s “Our Story” explains the provenance of its present narrative, and its Apparition Chapel history distinguishes the successive buildings. The Belgian Heritage Center’s settlement history supplies the wider community context. Reported healings are not presented here as independently verified medical outcomes.
Map reference: public shrine location and coordinates, matched to the shrine’s published Champion, Wisconsin location. The pin marks the public shrine, not a private home or a reconstructed historical walking route.