The reading
How it began
From 1956 a Precious Blood sister describes visions of Mary as patroness of the United States, with a private-revelation program of purity, a medal, a statue for the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Devotion spread in some American circles, often mixed with later, more apocalyptic claims the sister did not always control.
The day itself
After a careful review, the Bishops of Toledo and Fort Wayne-South Bend, in consultation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced in 2020 that the apparitions cannot be said to be of supernatural origin. Existing private piety was not forbidden in every form; public promotion as an approved apparition was.
Reading
How to read Our Lady of America
The archive keeps the refusals. America wanted a Fátima of its own. The Church, which had given Champion (Our Lady of Good Help) a genuine approval in 2010, was not being stingy. She was being accurate. Not every lady in a vision is Mary. Not every good exhortation to purity needs an apparition to be true.
Pray this
Prayers that sit with the story
Church status
How this sign has been received
Not affirmed as supernatural
Negative judgment, 2020, with Rome. Champion remains the United States’ approved Marian apparition. Status here: not affirmed as supernatural.
Sources
- Decree of the Diocese of Toledo / Fort Wayne-South Bend, 2020
- USCCB note on Our Lady of America
For the classroom
Our Lady of America (1956–1959, Rome City, Indiana / Fostoria, Ohio). Grade in this encyclopedia: Not affirmed as supernatural. Sr. Mary Ephrem Neuzil reports a lady calling herself Our Lady of America, asking for purity in the American Church and a statue in the National Shrine. In 2020 the bishops of the relevant dioceses, with the CDF, judged there was no evidence of a supernatural origin.
