Pilgrimage Sites in United States
Discover 71 sacred destinations in United States
The United States has one Church-approved Marian apparition site, and it is a small Wisconsin farming settlement: at Champion, Mary appeared to Adele Brise in 1859. The country's most visited shrine is likewise modest in scale — Chimayó, a small adobe sanctuary in northern New Mexico where pilgrims come for healing earth, reached by many on the 30 km Camino del Norte a Chimayó.
Much of American pilgrimage follows the American saints. Three Jesuit missionaries were martyred at Auriesville between 1642 and 1646, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha was born there; she was baptised at Fonda in 1676 and became the first Native American canonised. Emmitsburg, a Maryland mountain town, holds two national shrines — St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. Philadelphia keeps St. John Neumann, the first male saint of the United States, and St. Rita of Cascia. The incorrupt body of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini lies in New York City, the tomb of Blessed Solanus Casey in Detroit, and that of Blessed Michael McGivney in New Haven, where he founded the Knights of Columbus.
The Spanish colonial church left the oldest ground. St. Augustine holds the country's oldest Catholic pilgrimage site, the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche. Santa Fe, founded in 1610, has both the oldest church and the oldest Marian shrine in the United States. St. Junípero Serra is buried at Carmel Mission Basilica, one of the twenty-one missions strung along the 1,000 km California Mission Trail. In the east and midwest the great modern shrines take over: the largest church in North America in Washington, DC, the Carmelite basilica on Holy Hill above Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine, and the North American centre of Divine Mercy devotion at Stockbridge.
Allens Park
St. Catherine's Chapel on the Rock, an 18-by-32-foot chapel built in 1936 atop a boulder in the Colorado Rockies, survived the 2011 Pole Hill fire.
Allentown, Pennsylvania
The parish church the American bishops chose in 1974 for the national shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas.
Auriesville
Auriesville is where three Jesuit missionaries were martyred in 1642-1646, and the birthplace of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the 'Lily of the Mohawks'
Ave Maria Grotto
Brother Joseph Zoettl's 125 miniature stone replicas of holy sites worldwide, built over fifty years at Alabama's only Benedictine abbey.
Baltimore
America's first Catholic diocese, home to the Baltimore Basilica (National Shrine of the Assumption) and the National Shrine of St. Alphonsus Liguori.
Belleville
Belleville hosts the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, a major Catholic pilgrimage destination with beautiful devotional spaces.
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Bellevue
A diocesan Marian shrine of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood near Bellevue, Ohio, founded in 1850 and devoted to the Sorrowful Mother.
Berwyn, Illinois
Named for the abbot of Cluny who gave the Church All Souls' Day; Cardinal Mundelein made its side altar a shrine to the poor souls.
Carey
Ohio's national Marian shrine, where pilgrims have sought Our Lady of Consolation's intercession since 1875.
Carmel-by-the-Sea
Carmel-by-the-Sea is home to the historic Carmel Mission Basilica, final resting place of St. Junipero Serra and one of America's most popular Catholic pilgrimage sites.
Champion
The only Church-approved Marian apparition site in the United States, where Mary appeared to Adele Brise in 1859.
Chicago
Birthplace of U.S. devotion to St. Jude, national shrines to Sts. Anne, Peregrine, Cabrini, and Kolbe, and a Guadalupan pilgrimage near O'Hare.
Chimayó
America's most visited Catholic shrine, where pilgrims seek healing earth in a small adobe sanctuary.
Cincinnati
A Franciscan friary on the hilltop above Cincinnati, keeping a first-class relic of St. Anthony of Padua and the Tuesday novena to him.
Cold Spring
Minnesota/Great Lakes
150-year grasshopper miracle tradition in rural Minnesota, where German Catholic settlers built a chapel to petition Our Lady for relief from locust plagues.
Conception
Conception Abbey's Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, the first basilica west of the Mississippi, crowns a Benedictine monastery founded in 1873.
Darien
The Carmelite campus in Darien, Illinois, where the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux went after a 1975 fire destroyed her Chicago shrine.
De Pere
National Shrine of St. Joseph at St. Norbert College holds the only papally crowned statue of St. Joseph in the United States.
Detroit
Victorian Gothic shrine, a French colonial basilica founded in 1701, and the tomb of Blessed Solanus Casey define Detroit's Catholic landscape.
Doylestown
American Czestochowa — the foremost Polish-American pilgrimage center, housing a Black Madonna icon, run by Pauline Fathers since 1955.
East Boston
A 35-foot bronze Madonna crowns an East Boston hilltop above Boston Harbor and Logan Airport, a 1954 gift of a sculptor hidden from the Nazis.
Emmitsburg
Two national shrines — St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes — in a small Maryland mountain town.
Euclid
Ohio's marble replica of the Lourdes grotto, built around stone carried from Massabielle, with water running over it.
Fonda
The National Kateri Shrine marks where Kateri Tekakwitha, first Native American canonized, was baptized in 1676.
Graymoor
Franciscan motherhouse on a Hudson Valley hilltop; home of the St. Anthony National Shrine and birthplace of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Hanceville
Mother Angelica's Eucharistic shrine in rural Alabama, where Poor Clares maintain perpetual adoration beneath a gold-leafed cedar reredos.
Holy Hill
Holy Hill rises 1,350 ft above Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine, crowned by a Carmelite basilica and Marian shrine drawing 300,000 pilgrims each year.
Hulbert
Hulbert is the home of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, a Benedictine monastery of the Solesmes Congregation founded in 1999.
Indian River
Northern Michigan's National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods draws 300,000+ pilgrims yearly to a 31-foot bronze Christ on a 55-foot redwood cross.
Juneau
Juneau's National Shrine of St. Thérèse is a stone chapel on an island in Lynn Canal, reached by a causeway through the rainforest.
Kalaupapa
The Molokaʻi peninsula where St. Damien of Molokai served exiled Hansen's disease patients until his death, and where St. Marianne Cope followed.
L'Anse
Shrine of Venerable Frederic Baraga, the Snowshoe Priest who carried the Gospel to the Ottawa and Chippewa on foot and snowshoe.
La Crosse
La Crosse hosts the magnificent Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a premier Catholic pilgrimage destination founded by Cardinal Burke.
Laurie
Missouri's only national shrine honours Mary, Mother of the Church and all mothers, on a terraced Ozark hillside at Lake of the Ozarks.
Lewiston, New York
A ten-ton granite statue of Our Lady of Fatima crowns a saucer-domed basilica built after a 1954 land gift from a stroke survivor.
Little Falls
National Shrine of Our Lady of the Highway — a Main Street parish shrine to Mary as protectress of everyone on the road.
Lombard, Illinois
A national shrine to Mary Immaculate, Queen of the Universe, authorised by Bishop Blanchette in 1974 and kept inside a Lombard parish church.
Los Angeles
Home to the postmodern Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, St. Junípero Serra's missions, and the only tilma relic outside Mexico.
Massillon
A shrine to St. Dymphna, patron of those with mental illness, begun in 1938 by a chaplain at Massillon's state psychiatric hospital.
Memphis
St. Martin de Porres's national shrine, founded in 1936 in South Carolina and re-homed in 2001 inside a Gothic Revival church in downtown Memphis.
Miami
On Biscayne Bay, the Ermita de la Caridad shelters Cuba's patroness — a replica smuggled out in 1961, in a mantle-shaped conical shrine facing Cuba.
Middletown
The National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel serves as a major Catholic pilgrimage site dedicated to Marian devotion and Carmelite spirituality.
New Haven
New Haven holds special significance for Catholic pilgrims as the birthplace of the Knights of Columbus and home to Blessed Michael McGivney's tomb.
New York City
America's largest Catholic metropolis, home to St. Patrick's Cathedral, Mother Cabrini's shrine, the city's only catacombs, and national shrines.
New Orleans
Catholic heart of the Deep South, where French colonial faith endures in Creole churches and jazz funerals.
Newark
Two USCCB national shrines in Newark: St. Gerard Majella, patron of expectant mothers, and Jesús del Gran Poder, a Sevillian Passion devotion.
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City stands as a rising Catholic pilgrimage destination with the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine honoring America's first priest-martyr.
Onamia
Minnesota/Great Lakes
National Shrine of St. Odilia in Onamia, Minnesota — a Crosier priory church enshrining a relic of the Crosier Order patroness since 1952.
Peoria
The tomb of Venerable Fulton J. Sheen lies in the Peoria cathedral where he served as an altar boy and was ordained a priest in 1919.
Philadelphia
Home to two national shrines, St. John Neumann and St. Rita of Cascia, plus St. Katharine Drexel and other sacred sites.
Pittsburgh
More than 5,000 relics in some 800 walnut cases line the walls of Fr. Suitbert Mollinger's chapel on Troy Hill, above the Allegheny.
Prague
A statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague reached this Czech-founded Oklahoma town in 1947; the parish that received it became a national shrine.
Royal Oak
An Art Deco basilica in Royal Oak, Michigan, devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and guarded by a cross the Ku Klux Klan could not burn.
Sacramento
A floodlit Guadalupe mosaic fronts Sacramento's national shrine, where Venerable Bishop Alphonse Gallegos lies buried in a side altar.
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods
Indiana motherhouse of the Sisters of Providence: the National Shrine of Our Lady of Providence and the tomb of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin.
San Antonio
San Antonio's five Spanish missions and the National Shrine of the Little Flower, America's first shrine to St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
San Diego
San Diego's Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, founded by Junípero Serra in 1769, is the first of California's twenty-one Spanish missions.
San Francisco
San Francisco offers unique Catholic pilgrimage opportunities with the historic National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, established in 1849 and featuring a replica of Assisi's Porziuncola chapel for spiritual renewal without traveling to Italy.
San Juan
The Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle in South Texas draws over a million pilgrims a year, among the most visited U.S. Catholic shrines.
San Juan Capistrano
Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776 by St. Junípero Serra, is California's oldest active church and a National Shrine.
Santa Fe
America's oldest capital city, founded 1610, holds the oldest church and oldest Marian shrine in the US — a living tapestry of Spanish colonial faith.
Scranton
A Passionist shrine on a plateau above Scranton, where a novena to St. Ann has drawn pilgrims since 1924.
St. Augustine
Mission Nombre de Dios, where Spanish settlers said the first Mass in 1565, and the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche.
St. Louis
Home to the Midwest's only Vatican-authenticated miracle, St. Louis holds a uniquely concentrated Catholic heritage along the Mississippi.
Steubenville
Vatican-designated plenary indulgence site at Franciscan University, where pilgrims seek grace on the Ohio hilltop campus.
Stirling
Shrine of Saint Joseph in the Watchung Mountains — a 100-year-old pilgrimage center run by the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity.
Stockbridge
Eden Hill in Stockbridge, MA is the North American center of Divine Mercy devotion, home to the Marian Fathers and their National Shrine.
Stony Point
Don Bosco's Salesians on 160 wooded acres above the Hudson, where a 48-foot bronze Rosary Madonna crowns a national shrine.
Tucson
Tucson offers Catholic pilgrims spiritual encounters at historic Mission San Xavier del Bac and the Byzantine Mary Undoer of Knots Shrine.
Washington, D.C.
America's Catholic capital, home to the largest church in North America and the cathedral where President Kennedy's funeral Mass was celebrated.
Washington, New Jersey
America's national Fatima shrine, on 150 acres of New Jersey farmland under a 130-foot spire crowned by the Immaculate Heart.