Originally published at National Catholic Register
Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is strong and widespread. Twice as many pilgrims visit her shrine every year in Mexico City as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Around the world, churches, chapels and shrines have been dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, including one particular shrine set amid the rolling hills of the Coulee Region of Wisconsin, founded by Cardinal Raymond Burke in 2002.
Having experienced “the loss of the devotional life among the laity” in the first years after his priestly ordination in 1975, Cardinal Raymond Burke explained to the Register that the “restoration of the devotional life” became one of his primary missions.
“Knowing that a pilgrimage to a holy place is the prime devotion,” Cardinal Burke said. “I decided to try to work toward establishing a place of devotion and [deduced that] dedicating it to Our Lady would draw pilgrims to Our Lord.”
Cardinal Raymond Burke in the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe(Photo: Emily Felshiem/courtesy of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe)
While planning the construction of the shrine in 1999, Pope St. John Paul II published his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, in which “he underlined very strongly that in America, Our Lady
