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Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrates Mass at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin.Lisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin, August 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Nearly 3,500 pilgrims took part in the recent 10th anniversary celebrations for the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Founded by Cardinal Raymond Burke in 2001 when he was bishop of La Crosse, the Marian shrine is devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas and the unborn. It was dedicated in 2008.

In the image of Our Lady captured on the tilma (a type of cloak) belonging to St. Juan Diego of Guadalupe, to whom the Blessed Mother appeared in 1531, Our Lady is pregnant, carrying the Son of God in her womb. Because of this, Our Lady of Guadalupe has special significance for the pro-life movement. Our Lady of Guadalupe's apparitions are also credited with the conversions of millions to the Catholic faith.

Along with Cardinal Burke, the weeklong anniversary festivities and observances for the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe welcomed Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, Archbishop Emeritus of Mexico City and successor to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, who built the church on the Hill of Tepeyac after Our Lady’s request to St. Juan Diego.

Also attending the anniversary events were several bishops, religious and lay orders, priests, deacons, lay faithful and Gianna Emanuela Molla, daughter of pro-life St. Gianna Molla, who is honored in the shrine church.

“This church exists for one reason only,” Cardinal Burke said in his Mass homily for the anniversary of the shrine’s dedication, “namely, the mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“The church here was built to further the mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” he said, “so that many more might know her maternal love and, through her love, know their Savior.”

The celebration featured the Queen of the Americas Guild Conference, “Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Civilization of Love,” at which Cardinals Burke and Rivera Carerra were speakers, along with Bishop Arturo Cepeda, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and Monsignor Eduardo Chavez, a renowned expert on the Guadalupe apparitions and postulator for the cause for the canonization of St. Juan Diego.  

The anniversary events also included a Pontifical Mass in Spanish offered by Cardinal Rivera Carrera and concelebrated by Cardinal Burke, as well as solemn vespers, a procession to the shrine church, the dedication anniversary Mass, a reception on the church plaza, and a blessing by Cardinal Burke of an area on the shrine grounds for a future retreat house for pilgrims.  

Leif Arvidson, the shrine’s executive director, detailed the significance of the Our Lady’s appearances nearly 500 years ago on Tepeyac Hill for attendees of a special anniversary celebration dinner.

“In 1531, through a series of miracles – beautiful flowers appearing in the middle of December, and the beautiful image of Our Lady embedded on the cloak of St. Juan Diego — the bishop was convinced to build a church,” Arvidson said. “Within one decade after Our Lady appeared, approximately nine million Native Americans embraced the Catholic faith. Our Lady accomplished what she said she would do – she brought all of the people to her Son. It was the greatest mass evangelization in the history of Christianity.”

“We join in this great work of evangelization that began 2,000 years ago and continued with the early evangelization of the Americas,” he added. “We work for the honor of Our Lady, the conversion of hearts and minds to Christ, and for the glory of God.”  

Cardinal Burke remarked in his vespers homily that the great physical beauty of the shrine church is the sign of “an infinitely greater beauty — the Love of God, which has saved us from sin and everlasting death by the redemptive incarnation of His only begotten Son.”

Pilgrims had come to the shrine to encounter the Lord in moments of both great joy, he said at the anniversary Mass, but they also came in moments of great trial and grief.

“Our Lady has brought them here to meet Christ,” said Cardinal Burke, “and He has given them His peace and joy, even in moments of seeming impossible suffering.”

“When pilgrims leave this House of God,” he said, “they read the words of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, when he was suffering greatly in carrying out his mission: 'Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.'”

“The Mother of God assures them that the house of God is also their house, the house of the Church,” the cardinal continued, “and that, therefore, they have nothing to fear.”

The shrine church, along with its votive candle chapel, Memorial to the Unborn, and other accompanying amenities sit on 124 acres of land near La Crosse in western Wisconsin.  

More than 7,000 confessions were heard at the Shrine last year, most of those by the two resident Franciscans of the Immaculate

As of a few years ago, pilgrims had visited or sent donations from all 50 states and 73  countries, including 10 of the 13 Canadian provinces. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe does not receive any funding from the local diocese and is dependent on donations from private benefactors.     

More information on the shrine’s initiative to add a retreat house for pilgrims can be found HERE.