Our Lady of Good Help

The apparitions

a little backstory

In 1855, Adele Brise and her family voyaged to America with a group of Belgians who settled in Wisconsin. They left because the early 1800’s had been rough on Belgians. First, foreign workers had swarmed their cities causing the size of land plots to shrink. So many new workers arrived that even rural farming areas, like the one Adele was from, were overcrowded. In addition to job loss, Belgians suffered through the European Potato Famine and many people starved. Culturally, there wasn’t much peace, either. Catholics clashed with socialists, and a worker’s revolt was imminent.

Across the country, posters and pamphlets advertised life in America. “Cheap land as far as the eye can see … opportunities are endless for those who want to work.” These encouraged Belgians, like the Brice family, to leave. After weeks in the filthy steerage of a ship and the dusty bed of a wagon, Adele found herself in a wilderness unlike anything in modern America. Trees so thick the sunlight couldn’t pierce their foliage. Trees so wide a man’s arms couldn’t reach halfway around. Before they could farm, the settlers had to fell thousands of trees. A decade later, many Wisconsin Belgians were still pulling stumps from the ground.

In October 1859, five years after immigrating, Adele was lugging wheat to the grist mill when a bright glow appeared between a maple and a hemlock tree. It slowly took the form of a beautiful woman. The lady had blond hair, a white dress, a yellow sash and a crown of twelve stars. Astonished, Adele fell to the ground. This vision had appeared in the trees twice before, but this time Adele followed her confessor’s advice and asked the lady who she was and what she wanted.

“I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners,” said Our Lady of Good Help. One of the commands in Mary’s message was for Adele to teach the children their catechism. This (and more) is what Adele did for the remainder of her life. 

In Adele’s region, there were no churches, no priests, no Catechism of the Good Shepherd. So, traveling a radius of 50 miles, Adele hiked to the homes of settlers, often exchanging work for time to teach their children. Her father built a small chapel on the site of the apparition. Later, the settlers helped build a larger one. Eventually, Adele raised the money to build a school and started teaching her students there. She gathered a small group of women to teach with her, and they lived in a little farmhouse as third order Franciscans. 

During the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, Adele’s chapel and everyone who sought refuge there were spared. The fire destroyed an area the size of Rhode Island, killing more than a thousand people, but it only scorched the outside of the chapel fence. Even so, several skeptical church authorities monitored her activities and threatened to excommunicate her if she continued to spread her apparition story. It took 150 years for the church to officially approve the apparition. In 2010, after an investigation, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay announced Our Lady of Good Help as “worthy of belief” and made it America’s first Marian apparition.

The words of Our Lady of Good Help to Adele Brise — 3 Sources

Sr. Adele and an interpreter went on a begging mission and ended up in Chicago where they met the author Elisa Allen Starr. Starr was a well-known lecturer, teacher and writer. Adele was trying to raise money for her boarding school. Starr included the meeting in her book Patron Saints, which was a supplemental reader in Catholic schools. In several editions of the book (1871, 1883, 1898) the message of Our Lady to Adele remains the same.

Sr. Pauline was an eyewitness to Adele’s life after the apparitions. She saw Adele taking children to Mass. She learned from Adele. She heard Adele recount the apparition story time and again. When Adele died, the bishop put Sr. Pauline in charge of the chapel and boarding school, according to Adele’s wishes. Sr. Pauline was asked to write down everything she knew about Adele. The archives in Green Bay have 4 handwritten documents. Below is an excerpt of one, unedited in any way.

Sr. Dominica was a religious with the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Holy Cross, like Sr. Pauline above. She joined them in 1915 and taught in Wisconsin parochial schools for 14 years. She worked at the diocesan library and as Dean of Students in her order. In 1955, she published a book called “The Chapel, Our Lady of Good Help, A Shrine of Mary on the Green Bay Peninsula.” Through research and correspondence with contemporaries of Adele in Europe and America, she compiled the most comprehensive history of Adele’s life. The only error in her writing that has been corrected in the years since is a man she calls Adele’s brother who turns out to be her cousin. Some of the words used spoke by Our Lady to Adele were also changed between the 1981 version, which aligns with the Sr. Pauline account, and the 2014 version, which aligns with the Eliza Allen Starr account.

Note:
Adele’s surname has been recorded as “Brise,” “Brice, and “Briers” in historical documents. I use “Brise,” as this is the spelling officially chosen by the Archdiocese of Green Bay. Though “Brice” is found etched into her headstone, you will see both uses in quotes around this site.