The Sorrowful Mother Shrine is one of the oldest places of pilgrimage dedicated to the Blessed Mother in the Midwest and east of the Mississippi River in the U.S.A. In 1850, Fr. Francis de Sales Brunner, a missionary priest of the Most Precious Blood, built on this site a small red brick chapel in honor of the Sorrowful Mother. He did this because of his great devotion to Mary who safely guided him, along with other priests, from Germany and Switzerland to the United States. The shrine soon became the centerpiece of the many missions and parishes Fr. Brunner founded to minister to the newly arrived German Catholic settlers in northwest Ohio. The shrine quickly became a place where people could come and “stand still and feel the presence of God.”
