From the coast of Lake Erie to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, northern Ohio offers a diverse cross-section of travel experiences. Cleveland boasts a picturesque waterfront and the Rock N’Roll Hall of Fame; Canton is full of presidential history and home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. All across the Buck Eye State, there are also several historic shrines and churches and a small Catholic university town that is renewing the Church in America.
SHORE AND ISLANDS
Ohio has a surprisingly engaging coast, dotted with beachfront towns and quaint islands that feel a world away from the mid west. Whether on the islands or on the mainland coast, there is plenty of opportunity for outdoor adventure – from boating to fishing to birding, or simply relaxing in the sun and sand on one of the Shore and Islands region’s many beaches.
Sandusky was recently identified by USA Today as the top small coastal town in America and it is clear why. The town draws families from around the country to experience thrills at its Cedar Point amusement park, expansive indoor water park resorts.
The nearby islands provide distinctly memorable experiences – particularly Middle Bass Island with its 150 year old cellars of the Lonz Winery, or Put-in-Bay – also known as the Key West of the north. Put-in-Bay is the most scenic of the islands and you can get around it easily by bicycle or golf cart; its historic Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church offers weekly mass for islanders and visitors alike.
Back on the mainland, a short thirty minute drive away, near Bellevue, is the Sorrowful Mother Shrine. The shrine is one of the oldest places of pilgrimage dedicated to Our Lady east of the Mississippi River, established by a priest of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood around 1850. The principal chapel is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, with striking depictions of the seven sorrows of Mary. The 120 acre shrine grounds contain over 40 grottoes, including replicas of the Lourdes grotto and Sepulchre tomb.
CANTON
Canton is one of the gateway cities to Cayuhoga Valley National Park and is the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, attracting tens of thousands of football fans annually. But that is not the only attraction in town. There is also the National First Ladies Museum, the McKinley Presidential Museum, the Street of Shops that recreates a historic frontier town, the Hoover Place Planetarium, and the Canton Classic Car Museum.
Canton is also the home of two Catholic women that had a profound impact on each other and on the Church in America as a whole: Servant of God Rhoda Wise and Mother Angelica (Rita Rizzo). Their stories are inter-twined.
Rhoda Wise was a Catholic convert and mystic who experienced several reported apparitions from Jesus and St. Therese of Lisieux following her conversion. During the last years of her life, she also endured the stigmata. She lived in postwar Canton across town from a young Rita Rizzo, the future Mother Angelica. When young Rita was growing up, she suffered from a stomach ailment that left her unable to eat. Her mother took her to see Rhoda Wise, and it was there that Rita was healed from the ailment and set her life on a path that would eventually lead to the Poor Clares Monastery and the founding of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), which she grew into the largest Catholic media organization in the world.
Visitors to Canton can visit both the Rhoda Wise House & Grotto and the Mother Angelica Museum, at opposite ends of town. The Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, where Mother Angelica once lived, is open to the public for daily mass and private Eucharistic adoration. If you time your visit right, you can even order the Sister’s famous pepperoni rolls, soups or breads.
CLEVELAND
Set on the sparkling shores of Lake Erie, Cleveland boasts the Rock N’Roll Hall of Fame, the International Women Air and Space Museum, and the Great Lakes Science Center, with the NASA Glenn Visitors Center named after Ohio’s famous astronaut, John Glenn, with an Apollo capsule, collection of moon rocks and other space treasures.
The downtown is home to two important Catholic destinations: the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist and the Monastery of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist is lined with a number of impressive chapels, including the resurrection chapel which houses the skeleton of St. Christine, a fourth century girl martyred in Rome. She was the first female saint to have her relics translated to the U.S. and only the second time in U.S. history that the Vatican donated a complete set of saintly relics to a diocese.
The Monastery of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration offers perpetual Eucharistic Adoration to the public and is also the monastery into which Mother Angelica first entered. The monastery’s Conversion of St. Paul Shrine church has a beautiful sanctuary lined with artistic treasures and a striking mural painted by one of the mother superiors. The Sisters also maintain an All Saints Oratory, which is a vast collection of relics open to the public.
Travelers may well be surprised to discover in Cleveland a piece of the sacred relic of Christ’s grandmother – Ste. Anne. That relic is available to for veneration inside Saint Ann’s Shrine on Wilson Mills Road. The Shrine is located inside the provincial headquarters of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. The precious relic of the grandmother of Christ was cut from the forearm relic that was given by Pope St. Leo XIII to the Shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre in 1892.
Finally, just outside of Cleveland in Euclid is Our Lady of Lourdes National Shrine. The Shrine has stood on this site since 1926 and is a full replica of the Massabielle grotto in Lourdes. What makes this particular grotto unique is that it contains an actual stone from Massabielle on which Our Lady stood, which is the stone over which the water flows into the pool. The ex voto chapel gives testimony to the many pilgrims who have been healed after traveling to this shrine.
CASEY
In this small Ohio town stands a grand basilica with a unique Marian miracle attached to it: the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation. A church has stood on this site since 1867 and it has been a site of reported miraculous healings for almost 150 years. Pilgrims come to pray at the foot of the oak statue of Our Lady of Consolation, a devotion that is popular in Europe and was brought to this tiny corner of Ohio by the pastor in 1875. He hailed from Luxembourg and Our Lady of Consolation is the protectress of that Duchy. The most famous miracle occurred in Casey on May 24. 1875 when the statue was carried seven miles in pilgrimage to be installed at the shrine; the procession occurred in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, yet no one in the procession got wet.
STEUBENVILLE
Steubenville is a legacy coal mining town on the Ohio River whose history stretches back to the days of the territories and whose hometown legends include Dean Martin and Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State Edwin Stanton. But for Catholics, it is best known as ground zero for the new evangelization and the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Visitors to the campus can join the students at mass and praise and worship, walk through the outdoor Stations of the Cross and visit a re-created version of the Portziuncula chapel where St. Francis established the Franciscans.
CATHOLIC CONCIERGE 
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