There is something special about Minnesota. It is a touch of the True North, with so many unique experiences from ice fishing on glistening lakes, glimpsing the northern lights, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or snowmobiling across its wide expanses, to kayaking along the timeless Mississippi River in the state that is home to its headwaters.
At the heart of this fascinating state are the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The most well known attraction is the Mall of the Americas, with its 500+ stores and indoor amusement park, making it the largest mall in America. Music fans will also forever associate the Twin Cities with Prince, and flock to his former mansion at Paisley Park. The Twin Cities are full of other interesting discoveries, such as the expansive Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the largest outdoor sculpture garden in the U.S.; the Minnehaha Falls – a spectacular 53 foot urban waterfall adjoining the limestone bluffs that overlook the Mississippi River; the ornate State Capitol which has the second largest self supported marble dome in the world; and Summit Avenue in St. Paul, which is one of the most famous streets in America lined with stunning Victorian mansions like the James J. Hill House that belonged to a railroad baron, that date from America’s gilded age.
Cathedral of St. Paul
At the peak of Summit Hill high atop the banks of the Mississippi River is the mammoth cathedral of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis (the 3rd largest cathedral in the U.S.) It is an architectural wonder and important pilgrimage site, located a stone’s throw away from the state capitol, the ornate Victorian mansions of Summit Avenue, the Farmers Market, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of Science.
The Cathedral is the National Shrine of the Apostle Paul. Through an agreement with Rome, pilgrims to the basilica enjoy the same spiritual fruits as if they had visited the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, where the great saint is buried. As a concrete sign of the close link between these two sites, the Vatican donated a stone taken from the tomb of St. Paul in Rome to be housed in the Twin City’s cathedral.
Another unique facet of the Cathedral is the “Shrine of Nations” – a collection of side chapels that ring the sanctuary, each dedicated to the saints of the Twin Cities’ founding communities: French Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, and the Slavic speaking regions of eastern Europe. Of particular note is the French chapel, which contains a stone from the castle of Rouen, the last place where St. Joan of Arc was held prisoner before her execution in 1431.
A short drive from the Cathedral is another Catholic gem within St. Paul: Church of St. Agnes. It was built by the early German immigrant community and is an onion-domed baroque Austrian masterpiece that looks to be straight out of the Sound of Music. It offers the Latin Mass weekly and has a renowned choral group, that had been led for decades by the famous Monsignor Schuler who once served as vice president of the papal church music society and undertook strenuous efforts to preserve the rich sacred music tradition of the church in the post Vatican II era.
Basilica of St. Mary
In the Twin Cities, everything is best in pairs. It come as no surprise, then, that is an equally stunning basilica on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River that serves as the co-cathedral of the Archdiocese. This church has a special place in the history of American Catholicism, as it was the first church in the history of the United States to receive papal recognition as a basilica (which it received in 1926).
The Basilica of Saint Mary was built by the same architect that built St. Paul’s Cathedral and both of these grand churches were the vision of the city’s first Archbishop, John Ireland. Not only was he an influential leader within his diocese, but he played an influential role as a nation builder in the early twentieth century, leading efforts to resettle over 4,000 poor Irish families from the slums of east coast cities to expanses of available rural land that a Catholic charity had purchased in Minnesota.
The ornate marble sanctuary is crowned by a splendid baldaccin (similar to the one that rises above the high altar at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) and statues of the twelve apostles that were carved in Italy; in fact, these statues are half size replicas of the ones that line the facade of St. John Lateran Basilica.
Whereas the Cathedral of St. Paul places an emphasis on the founding nations of the Twin Cities, the Basilica’s side chapels are dedicated to different Marian devotions, including Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of La’Vang, and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which houses the original statue of the Immaculate Conception dating back to the first parish in 1876. Not to be overlooked is a chapel to Mary’s mother St. Anne, whose altar contains relics of Good Ste. Anne.
The Basilica also hosts a religious art gallery in its basement – the St. John XXIII Art Gallery -open to visitors throughout the year.
Our Lady of Lourdes
In 1680, the Belgian explorer Father Louis Hennepin (the first European to discover Niagara Falls) passed through the region and named and sited the St. Anthony Falls; these are the only naturally occurring falls on the entire Mississippi River. Two centuries later, French Canadian pioneers returned to this same spot to establish the oldest continually operating church in Minneapolis. Named after the miraculous events that had occurred about decade earlier in Lourdes, this church is the first parish in the United States to be named in honor of the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Guided tours of Our Lady of Lourdes are available and it is truly worth taking the time to explore. There are many traces of its French origins remaining and you can even purchase a traditional Quebec meat pie (tourtiere), served at the parish for over 100 years. The flags surrounding the altar – the U.S flag with 32 stars (as it is existed at time of parish’s establishment), the papal flag, the old Canadian flag, the provincial flag of Quebec – further situate the historic significance of this church. For pilgrims, the real treasure to discover is the extensive collection of relics of American and European saints displayed in 17th century reliquaries near the side doors. In the Shrine to our Lady of Lourdes is a first class relic of the apparition’s visionary, St. Bernadette.
A very short drive across the Mississippi River will take you to some of the key attractions along the Minneapolis riverfront, including U.S. Bank Stadium – home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings – the Mill City Museum (set in the ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill), and the Guthrie Theater.
Day Trips from Minneapolis-St. Paul
With Minneapolis as your base, there are a number of easy day trips to significant pilgrimage destinations in and around the Twin Cities.
Lakes Country and the Shrine of St. Odilia
Minnesota is blessed with bountiful fresh water lakes and rivers, with an estimated 10,000 + lakes scattered across the state. About 90 minutes north of Minneapolis is one of the prime destinations for outdoors enthusiasts in the state: Lake Mille Lacs. It is rated the best lake in the entire country for bass fishing, and well known for its ice fishing too. There are also extensive parks nearby, including the Father Hennepin State Park with a sizable beach and the Mille Lacs Kathio State Park with its lovely cross country skiing trails and a 100 foot fire tower you can climb for spectacular views of the fall colors in the park. Nearby Brainerd Lake offers some great waterfront resorts.
Just a few minutes from Mille Lacs, in the town of Onamia, is the Abbey of the Crosier Fathers and Brothers, home to the National Shrine of St. Odilia. The Crosiers are a medieval order of friars that formed in thirteenth century Belgium and quickly spread across Europe. They abide by the rule of St. Augustine and their distinctive religious habit continues to display the red and white crusaders cross. In the mid nineteenth century, Crosier missionaries first arrived in the U.S. to minister to Belgium and Dutch immigrants settling around Green Bay, WI. However, they failed to establish a priory due to the onset of the Civil War, and did not make another attempt to permanently settle in America until this priory was opened in Onamia in 1922.
Who is St. Odilia, I am sure you will ask? She was an early Roman martyr with a special connection to the Crosiers. Around 300 AD, she journeyed with some other Christian women from England to continental Europe, but she ended up being captured by the Huns in Germany and killed for her faith in Cologne. In the year 1287, she appeared three times to a Crosier friar in Paris, revealing that God had asked her to be protectress of the Crosier Order and telling the friar where to find her relics in Cologne. Sure enough, the friar traveled to Cologne, uncovered her relics buried beneath a pear tree and brought them back to the motherhouse in Belgium, where they have been venerated ever since. In 1952, a major relic of St. Odilia was sent to the priory at Onamia in the U.S. where it is available for veneration and used in healing masses. There have been many cures reported at the shrine of those blessed by the relic.
St. Cloud
St. Cloud is small town Minnesota at its best. It is a great spot to pause for a few hours with children in tow, with many unique experiences to offer ranging from swimming in large quarry-fed swimming holes to urban fishing at Lake George in the heart of the downtown. A visit to St. Cloud would not be complete without a stop at Munsinger Clemens Gardens on the banks of the Mississippi.
St. Cloud is the gateway to two notable attractions for Catholic visitors: St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, and the Grasshopper Chapel in Cold Springs.
St. John’s Abbey is located on the campus of St. John University, and is a Benedictine community. In 1998, the Abbey commissioned a world renowned calligrapher to produce a handwritten illuminated Bible, hearkening back to the role that Benedictines had played for centuries prior to the invention of the printing press. Known as the St. John’s Bible, it is quite renowned and it is often on traveling exhibition to museums in the United States and Europe. There is a permanent display the Abbey, where visitors can tour the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library where there are 28 original folios on display in the gallery from all seven volumes of the bible. The museum also showcases how the illuminated bible was produced. Visitors can also join the monks for prayer in the Abbey church and walk miles of nature trails through its arboretum.
From Collegeville, it is about a fifteen minute drive to Cold Springs, where a most remarkable site awaits: the Grasshopper Chapel.
The chapel, built to our Our Lady of the Assumption, was originally constructed during a terrible plague of grasshoppers destroying crops across the region. There had been several attempts to eradicate the grasshoppers to no avail. Eventually, the local parish priest promised to build a chapel to our Lady if the grasshoppers disappeared. So it happened. The chapel was built and the grasshopper plague came to an end. Although the original was destroyed by a tornado, it was re built. The one item to remain intact during the tornado was the statue of Our Lady, which still rises gracefully above the altar today in the rebuilt chapel.
Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, LaCrosse (WI)
About 2.5 hours from Minneapolis is the City of LaCrosse on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River. There are several scenic drives connecting the two cities, including one that passes through the town of Pepin, of Little House on the Prairie fame, where the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.
LaCrosse is home to one of the most important Marian shrines in the United States: the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Set high atop a mountain in the Bluff Country of Wisconsin, this shrine to the Patroness of the Americas was the dream of Cardinal Raymond Burke, who served as Bishop of LaCrosse in the 1990s. The shrine officially opened in 2008 and its construction was made possibly entirely through private donations of the faithful.
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The scenic grounds include a rosary walk, outdoor stations of the cross, a votive chapel, a memorial to the unborn with an incredible statue of the Mother of the Unborn (a statue cast in Mexico of Our Lady of Guadalupe cradling three unborn babies in her arms), and devotional areas to saints ranging from St. Joseph to St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The bronze devotional of St. Joseph the Worker is particularly powerful, as it depicts St. Joseph teaching the young Christ about wood work, with the wood in his hands taking the shape of a cross.
Continuing through the grounds, what draws the pilgrim most is the Italianate church and campanile. Approaching the beautiful church from a distance, it looks very much like the sort of hilltop church one would find passing through the small towns and villages of Italy. Inside, it is a work of art devoted to Our Lady. The altar is covered by a 27 foot baldacchino and framed by a magnificent mosaic of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The pillars rising up around the sanctuary are inscribed with all the titles of Mary contained in the Litany of Loretto. The side walls are framed with original paintings of six treasured saints, like Maria Goretti to Gianna Molla; the paintings were commissioned specifically for the shrine and many of the paintings have relics of the depicted saint beneath them for veneration by pilgrims.
CATHOLIC CONCIERGE 
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